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[InBoxReview] Mirage Hobby Vickers E Mark B

Hello and welcome to my first review on this page. This will be an InBoxReview of Mirage Hobby´s 1/72 scale Vickers E Mark B tank.

General:
I got my kit for about 15€ from Amazon and it is aviable in dedicated modelling stores for about 10-12€ a piece plus shipping. It is one of many Vickers E-based tanks that Mirage Hobby makes in this scale. The kit is plastic and contains no "special" parts (resin, photoetch etc.).

The vehicle:
The Vickers Mark E was an important tank design of the late 20s and early 30s of the last century. It was developed in the United Kingdom but was never adopted by the British army for combat. When offered for export worldwide, it turned oout to be a major sucess and it was later used worldwide iin form of license-build versions and/or copies. The Mark B was the second original model mounting a single turrert with a 47mm gun and a machinegun in the then new "Duplex"-type mount. The particular vehicle depicted in the kit is a polish variant.

The kit:
The box comes with coloured artwork of a camoflaged vehicle at the front and is inscripted both in Polish and English. The scale is (who might have guessed) 1/72 and there are four plastic sprues, rubber tracks, a decal-sheet and the instructions inside the box together with an advertisement for Mirage Hobby´s Facebook page.
There are two different colours represented in the sprues. Sprues A and B (general Vickers E/T-26 parts I guess) are held in dark grey and the other specific sprues are of light grey colour and seem to old an upper hull part for the twin-turreted version.

The details on the parts are quite fine but aren´t as good as those on the new Modelcollect or Revell released models. Being rubber band, the tracksdo look nice but might tend to "missbehave" when fitting them as they´re not DS-style tracks.

The decal-sheet contains options for two Polish versions. Nothing special here.
The instructions are both Enlish and Polish and show two possible camo-scemes with colour-references for Humbrol and Kolor. Both are interesting and I´m not certain which I will ultimately paint.

Conclusion:
To have a model of this litle and often underestimated tankcertainly is a cool think for every interwar or WW2 collection. The kit is nicely detailed for the price and should end up looking nice after painting and weathering. As it wil be my next project, I will report any fitting issues etc. I find, so stay upgraded.
If you want anoter option to build this vehicle, there are kits made by UM from Ukraine and First to Fight from Poland, but I don´t know how they compare.

The Kit on the scalemates-website: https://www.scalemates.com/kits/108196-mirage-hobby-72604-vickers-e-mk-b

Happy modelling everyone!



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