Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So when I started flames of war, I started with the open fire box set seeing as it was my first delve into battlefront.
the quality of the plastic models was so poor that I had serious consideration if I even wanted to play Flames of War after seeing the horror of the Sherman and the bendable plastics rifle barrels *shudders*

However, I have seen a large amount of new plastic models from battlefront and wanted to know how well the model quality holds up to the old sculpts. The models I am mainly looking at is the infantry models for the Germans and the new plastic Soviet pranks.

If anybody has any prior experience with these models please share your stories.

I think the german infantry is the same as what's in the open fire box. The Sherman's were an admitted failure, and they have a totally redesigned sculpt in the new box set. I have assembled the T-34 and Su-100 box and really liked both of them. Good detail and a single solid track piece which is less fiddly than PSC (although I think they have changed now). Thumbs up from me on the BF tanks, and I think the infantry is good as well.

I've assembled the new panzer 4's, StuG, Panther and T34 - all have been a real pleasure to assemble. I prefer the sculpts to the PSC ones, but I think a lot is personal preference

Are the Battlefront plastics HIPS or the standard injection molded styrene their competitors are using?

Battlefront have come on leaps and bounds since the initial Open Fire sculpts. Their new plastics are excellent.

Matter of opinion I guess, having looked at the sprues of their Pershing and their release in the material most of the finer details seem to be quite faint and simplified [even for 1/100 gaming], though that might just be a problem with the HIPS material if they are using it.

I picked up Vasiliy's Hammer (the T-34 and SU-100 box). No complaints. I've also got the new plastic Soviet Strelkovy, and have no complaints - aside from the lack of SMG-armed figures.

I got a platoon of plastic Comets, and they're wonderful. Quality was fantastic. Very little to none of the normal problems you'd get from manufacturing (IE: flashing.) Not much to say on the infantry.

I've assembled the Comets, Panthers, and StuG's, and have to say the quality is top notch.

The kits go together smoothly, have sharp details, and catch paint more easily than PSC models do. Not to mention the plastic tank commanders are miles ahead of the metal ones, the little details on them are just great.

They can be a bit plain without stowage and stuff like webbing, and they look a bit *too* clean sometimes, but that can be fixed with proper weathering and detail work.

Pretty much echoing the thrust of the thread here.

I too was horrified by the Open Fire plastics for vehicles though the infantry were passable. I also picked up a box of Pz4 at the same time and despite the incorrect number of schurzen those went together fantastically. At the time I was puzzled how they could come from the same company, honestly. Found out the way they had sculpted the masters didn't translate well to plastics, a lesson they seem to have learned well and not repeated.

I've since built the new StuG, Sd.Kfz 251, T-34, SU-100, Sherman V, Pershing, IS-2, ISU-152 and M3 half-track from the WW2 line and the Team Yankee stuff. I have American and Russian infantry waiting to be painted, but outside of the "no SMGs" issue mentioned with the Russians they all look nice enough for something the size of a fingernail. I've been pleased with the build quality of all of the vehicles and they went together without any fuss, though a few have had funky attachment points on the sprues that seemed to need more scraping than others to get right. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them to someone interested.

I like PSC's vehicle kits as well, but I do find I prefer the chunkier BF style. Perfectly serviceable kits though if you want options.

The newer kits are good, they are still learning whats a good idea and what isn't (see the Mil-24D rotors, far too weak), the simple tracks are workable but prefer the multi-part PSC design (you only build them once, they are not that hard to do and you look at them a lot).

BF generally have made good gaming models as opposed to display models by beefing up fragile bits and avoiding stuff thats just going to fall off.

The Su-100 is a beautiful kit, the T-34 less so but hard to nail down why. T-72 is very nice, the plastic infantry are also technically nice but really prefer metal infantry - the plastic stuff lacks the variations, fine for riflemen say as you have a few different ones but you get 'one' HMG team, you get several of them, but they are identical, same with officers.

Vehicles are hard to fault though.


Even the Open Fire original M4s went together ok with a bit of care and a fair bit of force, some swearing, a vice and a chainsaw, plus some filler

leopard wrote:
the T-34 less so but hard to nail down why.

My vote is on a few rather daft sprue attachment points. The 85mm turret in particular is somewhat bothersome in this regard with the corners of the turret and mantlet mounting point. I'd have to find some unbuilt ones to confirm, but I think the tracks also have the attachment between the treads which similarly requires a bit of extra work to clean out so they sit nicely though that also applies to the SU-100. I'm also dimly recalling an issue with one of the cupolas and the indentation mark, but again I'd have to actually pull out one to check.

They're not major defects, but they do make it somewhat more annoying to deal with compared with most of their other kits. I believe the T-34 was their first digitally sculpted plastics though so it'd make a certain amount of sense why that's the roughest one.

leopard wrote:
the simple tracks are workable but prefer the multi-part PSC design (you only build them once, they are not that hard to do and you look at them a lot).

Unfortunately PSC has abandoned the multi-part tracks in favour of generic detail-less single-piece tracks, whilst Battlefront has seriously upped the ante by somehow managing to cram the same level of detail as the PSC multi-part tracks onto their single-piece ones. The Battlefront IS-2 absolutely hammers the PSC IS-2 into the dirt on that front.

I rather like the PSC JS2...

Big P wrote:
I rather like the PSC JS2...

You're biased

As always the tank itself *is* a nicer sculpt (there's always something inexplicably chunky about BF plastic hulls/turrets)

But the tracks don't really look anything like the real thing, which is made all the more worse by the fact that the cover art for the box is kind of in-your-face about what they should look like.

I dunno... it's 15mm... silly size anyway!

PSC vehicles tend to be much nicer models, BF ones much nice game pieces, the chunkiness helps a lot.

Agree on the tracks on the IS-2 though.

15mm is a daft size for tank on tank, 6mm is much better for that.

Though having just put a stack of 15mm infantry on bases 15mm is much nicer for combined arms..

28mm is daft for anything with a tank though

While I generally agree that 15mm is probably too big for modern tanks, a friend of mine who used to play Challenger in micro-armor noted that at that scale the figures are so small that it makes it hard to pick out the details.

The SU kit is nice. The tracks are a bit chunky but with a bit on ingenuity I should be able to make five SU-100s and five SU-85s out of the same kit.

Currently the SU and the M113 kit (which is also well done) are the only BF kits I own.