Painting: Abrams (Khurasan)

Hello again!

I managed to steal some time off and get to business with the new tank.
I have to say - it was a pleasure to paint!

I decided to go with the Desert colours that you see in most pictures of Abrams MBT's.

Step 1.
Primed it with white auto primer, and then base coated it with a slightly watered down GW Tallarn Desert.

Step 2.
The next stage was to Line Wash the model.
First I drybrushed the whole model again with the base colour, to improve coverage.
Then I took some GW Agrax Earthshade and painted it along all the detail lines.

Step 3.
Once the wash was dry, I painted the tracks with GW Charadon Granite (no idea what the current version is!).
Then I started drybrushing the colour up to highlight.
Starting with decent coverage of base colour, then mixed in some GW Bleached Bone for the second cover.
At this point I took a medium brush and with a bit of water blocked in any areas where the wash was still showing.

Step 4.
I added details (lights / periscopes, machine gun) and a final line highlight of Bleached Bone.

I can't lie - it was an embarrassingly simple paint job, and the model made it a real joy to paint and easy as heck!

I've included some pictures with a Peter Pig USMC mounted on a coin, rather than one of the giant 20mm lipped bases. Hopefully this will make scale more apparent.

Now to get finishing the infantry!

Thanks,
Ben.

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.

Post! (Khurasan Miniatures)

Got Post!

Today I came home after a course to find a little box of joy from Khurasan Miniatures.
My Abrams had arrived!
Along with a single squad pack of his new US Army infantry, a Cyborg Supercop, and a pack of Space Demons.

Post!

New Khurasan releases!

Well helloooo Modern US Army!

These bad boys just got released by Khurasan, and they've been long awaited.
I already have a 15mm Abrams [from QRF], but the chance to have a modern MBT made by an Excellent company like K, couldn't resist!
Ordered an Abrams and single squad of Infantry for now, just a taster.