The first thing we must do is address your initial reaction to seeing the above figure images. Yes, they are made in a translucent plastic which makes them very hard to see and very hard to photograph, so clearly they must be painted before they can be used. To help you see what these figures actually look like, we have primed a couple of poses, and fully painted another, which you can see below.

This website is full of sets labelled as 'modern', some of which are 30 years old, so the term is very perishable. This set was designed in 2015, and of course depicts men in more of a front-line combat zone than most armies of the same date. Other 'modern' IDF sets have proved to be less modern than they should have been, even when they were first produced, so can this set bring the story right up to date?

The men all wear standard IDF fatigues, the upper body being largely obscured with gear as you would expect of men on active service, but the trousers have the cargo pockets on either side so everything looks good. All the men wear helmets and, as the title has already told us, they also wear the Mitznefet, which is a floppy helmet cover that helps break up the outline of the man. It does not look smart, but no one worries about that these days, and here it has been convincingly done. Boots too look fine, and knee protectors are also worn.

The Mitznefet was introduced in the mid-1990s, but these men are more modern than that because seven of the 12 poses carry the Tavor assault rifle, and three more have the grenade-launching version. The last two have the Negev light machine gun. The Tavor dates to 2001 in service, so basically these men are good for the past decade and a half. While gear can vary greatly, all these seem to have much the same arrangement, which is the Marom-Dolphin assault gear, and again it is well done here, with the myriad of pouches and straps all modern gear contains.

The set is named 'advance', and that is exactly what the figures are doing. Most are moving forward with weapon at the ready, although three are down on their knees - one with weapon raised as if to fire. All the poses are different, and while for a general set the lack of variety would be a problem, for one specifically labelled as this one is the poses are all appropriate and very well done too. We thought the posture and the way the weapons are being held was very realistic and natural, and cannot fault any of the poses.

This is the first set of 3-D printed figures we have ever reviewed, and so the method of manufacture is somewhat different to conventional plastic sets. All the sets in this range were designed using computer software, and the result is excellent. The proportions are perfect and everything is as detailed as it needs to be (even if it is hard to tell before painting). Naturally painting can distort the quality of a figure (for good or ill), but from what we can see and found when we primed and painted our examples, these are excellent figures. With no mould there is of course no flash or hidden plastic, and indeed there are a lot more areas that are quite difficult to reach (for painting) since there is no restriction of a two-piece steel mould. This makes them hyper-realistic, but also more of a challenge to paint, though no one is likely to complain about that.

One concern we initially had was that the material used might be fragile, as resin is, but on the contrary we found these figures to be very stiff (compared to traditional plastics) yet not at all brittle, so no special care was needed when preparing them. Naturally there is no sprue either - the figures come as they are, though this does not include any sort of a base, which we found annoying (and we had to base our example figure before we could paint it).

Although there are already several sets of 3-D printed figures on the market, as our first purchase this set much impressed us both for the quality of the final result and the advantages of production using this method. Based on this set we would have no hesitation in purchasing more 3-D figures, because everything here is of the highest quality. Given that this manufacturer does a range of sets covering the IDF with other clothing arrangement and poses, the lack of variety in those respects here is no problem, so this set is heartily recommended.