Quick Review: Zvezda KV-1

After recently playing a few games with both my Panther based tank company and my US Rifle Co I've decided that I have more fun playing a tank based army. So as I still want to take part in WWPD's Operation Sea Lion campaign I needed an Allied tank force. As I didn't want to spend a lot of cash I decided to go with a KV-85 based Russian Gvardeyskiy Tyazhelyy Tankovy Polk or Guards heavy tank regiment using Zvezda models. Although the models are the 1940 KV-1e not the KV-85 my wargaming group are not anal about such things as long as it looks something like the model it represents. It will also give me the basis of both early and mid war forces if I want.

So on with the review. As usual there's a nice painting of the model on the front of the box.

The back of the box shows the instructions for assembling the model and also at the top the length of the assembled model. In this case it's 6.8 cm which at 1/100 is bang on for the length of the real thing. This was one of the things I was worried about before I bought them as the Pz II's I bought were 50mm shorter at 1/100 than the real thing.

The contents of the box are shown below. There are two sprues containing the six parts making up the model, a blurb about Age of Tactic the Russian game the models are designed for and the stat card for the model to be used in the game.

The models took longer to clip out and assemble than the Pz II's as there were more attachment points on the sprue. This meant more cleaning up on the finished models, but on the plus side there is no flash and no mould lines to remove. Although I would recommend glueing the models as they don't fit together as tightly as the Pz II's did. But the turret is much easier to remove and replace than on the Pz II's which is a bonus.

Below are some shots of an assembled model with comparison shots to give you an idea of their relative size. The detail on the models is ok but a bit sparse as there are no things like tools or tow cables modelled on the hull. At a guess I would say this is an earlier model in the range as the Pz II's have a decent amount of detail on them

Side view of the KV-1e

Top View

Comparison with Battlefront's M10 Tank Destroyer

Comparison with the PSC Panther

Side shot with the PSC Panther

So what do I think of the kit? Well overall I like it, the scale is good and the price is great. The only downside is the lack of detail on the hull. I'd give it 7/10 and great value at £2.99 each. If you want to have a look at my earlier review of the Zvezda Pz II it can be found here.