Warlord Games Bolt Action Panther Ausf A

I had a nice surprise turn up at the office some time ago in the form of a Warlord Games Bolt Action Panther Ausf A plastic tank kit courtesy of Wargames Illustrated. Of course the rest of my day was spent day dreaming about building the kit and nothing else.

This kit comes in an A4 size box. It’s produced in cooperation with Italeri. And that’s why you see the Italeri logo on the front and back of the box. I’m not familiar with their tank kits but I have built a number of their WW2 planes and modern jet  kits and they were really fun to build. So you can imagine my excitement building this Panther!

These are what you get inside the box.

An instruction sheet. Sweet and simple. 

A decal sheet.

And a bag containing two sets of sprues. The two sprues are light grey in colour with crisp mouldings and recessed panel lines. There are 25 parts in total on the two sprues. Some minor flashes but that’s normal and are not hard to remove. Overall the quality of the sprues is very good. 

Also in the box is the customary sheet promoting Warlord's other range.

The kit is in 1/56 scale. I might be wrong but I believe this is a special scale made specifically  for Bolt Action to be in scale with their 28mm size infantry figures. 

This kit was quite easy to build. Part fits were great. I was really impressed with the crisp details and overall look of the tank. You will have have a very nice looking Panther tank when completed.

One part which I was really pleased with was how they made the wheels into a single part. Moulding them together makes perfect sense as this tank will be moved around quite a lot on the gaming tables. As such durability is a super plus point. This kit will stand the rigours of fierce tabletops battles and I am really stoked to test it in my German list.

While taking pictures of the finished tank I somehow snapped the radio antenna supplied with the kit. It must have somehow got sucked into the twilight zone because I just couldn't find it even after turning my hobby room upside down twice and another time for good measure. So what you see in my pictures are not the antenna piece provided in the kit but a broom strand replacement.

I had a lot of fun building and painting this kit. It’s easy to build, fittings are very good and the details are excellent. I highly recommend it. Bolt Action players should all get one…two I mean. For their Armoured Fury tank war list :).

My thanks to Wargames Illustrated and Warlord Games for the review copy.