British Tank Destroyer M10 IIC ACHILLES

Ron Garcia
Super easy build, but what else would you expect from Tamiya? The only difficult, more like time consuming, part was it required a lot of prepainting due to the tank being open topped.

Painting could have been helped if the ammo storage racks in the lower hull weren't one piece. I would have gladly exchanged ease of building for separate shells and racks. As it is, very careful painting is required because the shells butt right up against the racks in multiple locations.

You can get away with installing all the non green parts in the open turret after it is built, but some parts are tricky to get into place. For example, I thought the sten guns (J16) would be easy to place, but the angle was difficult with the main gun installed.

Speaking of the 17 pounder, don't install part U27 if you plan on installing part U20 after you finish painting it. You can easily glue U27 on afterwards.

The glueable one piece tracks were easy to install. In fact, they were quite refreshing after building so many over engineered separate track link tank kits lately.

The figures were a surprise for me. I'm used to Tamiya's figures just butting up together with the hope that the torso or arms dried in the correct position when I placed them on the kit. Not so with these. They are keyed so that they align perfectly with the kit. The heads are even separate making painting them that much easier. The half figure of the driver is a let down as its static pose seems out of place next to the three turret figures.

Overall, a worthy kit for your British tank collection. I highly recommend it!

Stuart Massey
complete 8/2019