Tuesday 15 January 2013

Mini Review: M1A2 Abrams (Khurasan)

Once I got over my excitement of receiving post today from Khurasan Miniatures (http://khurasanminiatures.tripod.com) I opened it all up and got started on the Abrams.

It's listed on the Khurasan site in the Modern US Army section (http://khurasanminiatures.tripod.com/modern-us-army.html) as an M1A2 SEP model.

M1A2 in action. Oh yeah!
So how's the model?

Contents.
First impressions of the kit are very good!
Its chunky and simple, compared to the QRF kit it looks like a quick job to get it on the battlefield.
My only concern at first was the machine gun, which has a verrrrry thin barrel, and mine was quite bent.
Using a knife and some determination I managed to straighten it out, but I don't hold much hope it'll stay that way.

The wibbly gun...

The main hull is cast a a single piece, with two track sections that are very easy to glue on.
The side skirts are separate, so they can release different versions without recasting the whole track unit.


The track and hull pieces line up with 3 holes for the side skirts.
Mine took a tiny bit of filing, but for a resin model it was a piece of cake!
When glueing the side skirts on I had to cut down on of the tabs designed to fit in the holes, not sure why but it wasn't lined up!
Every other part fit like a dream.

Utter Beast!

The kit fit together with very little effort, there were a couple of casting / design issues (see machine gun and side skirts), but the whole thing took maybe 10 minutes to put together!

Comparing it to my QRF (quickreactionforce.co.uk) Abrams, it is chunkier, taller, wider, and boxier.
Just as it should be!
I like the QRF range, but a resin casting seems more conducive to the real heavy straight edged look of the modern MBT.

Khurasan (left), QRF (right).
Khurasan (left), QRF (right).
And finally a pic with some 15mm miniatures I had lying around.

Khurasan M1A2, Peter Pig USMC (left), Copplestone Castings Barbarian (centre) and The Scene UK Special Agent (right).

Overall...  9/10!
A great kit, I was very impressed, and would definitely recommend it as the best modern MBT mini in 15mm scale that I've come across.

If this is what we can expect from Khurasans modern range, then I'll be desperately awaiting some more!

Ben.



3 comments:

  1. Very nice and thanks for that, what colour did you use on the QRF Abrams?

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  2. Hey, thanks very much!

    I painted it a while ago, but I think I used GW Desert Yellow (now Tallarn Sand), washed it with Devlan Mud (now Agrax Earthshade), and drybrushed it up with Desert Yellow, Komando Khaki (Karak Stone) and Bleached Bone (Ushabti Bone).
    That's what I'll be using to paint the Khurasan one!
    Ben.

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  3. Looks like the QRF model has the wrong blow out panels and wrong rear deck to be an M1A2 SEP.

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