Manufacturer: Gun: Airfix, crew: Valiant
Genre: WWII 20mm
Comments: This is the venerable Airfix kit of the 6pdr anti-tank gun, used almost throughout WWII by British and Commonwealth troops, and by the Americans as their 57mm ATG. Close-up photography really does reveal modelling and painting flaws quite mercilessly; I'm not surprised so many TV presenters are viewing the advent of HDTV with fear and trembling.
The crew are a couple of figures pulled from Valiant's British Infantry 1944-45 set; they're pretty good figures, and being plastic, they're cheap as chips. Not as cheap as Airfix or Esci plastic maybe, but on the other hand they're made of a hard plastic that is a lot easier to modify and paint than the soft polyethylene that Airfix and Esci use. They're also a little chunkier, which I like in a wargames figure.
There are a few manufacturers of good-quality plastic figures designed specifically for wargaming popping up these days, and overall I approve. Metal figures have many advantages, but they're expensive (and getting more expensive by the minute), and decent plastics allow a gamer on a budget to field a decent army without having to break the bank.
