This particular element in the vast Zvezda Art of Tactic wargame range depicts one of the most widely used guns of World War II. As usual our interest is in the figures that are included, but the gun itself is an impressive and elaborate model which is no quick-build project. It has a good number of quite small parts which make some fairly delicate assemblies, so the resulting complex model looks very good and from what we can see is pretty accurate.

The crew consists of the two seated men and two standing. The first standing man is on the ground and passing an ammunition clip to the second, who stands on the gun and is feeding the auto-loader’s hopper. The first figure is inevitably quite specific to this ordnance, but the second is more general, as are the two seated figures, so they do have wider uses. All the figures have separate arms so the pose can be varied to a degree. All wear standard British battledress of course, but have an early war feel to them by the inclusion of the respirator at the alert position on the chest. The figures are all very crisply detailed and the parts go together well, although there are no separate bases for either standing figure as they are intended to fit into the large base provided. Although the poses are fairly specific to this gun these figures do have potential for other uses and at the time of writing there is very little British artillery for this period so anything is welcome.