Project IV/23

T-34/76 with mine rollers

It wasn't that long since I got this set (with paints!), I had decided to take it on the project table right after the 'Mechs. Now that I was thinking of it, I haven't made that many Zvezda models in total, and only one of them has been a tank, the T-35 a few years ago.

I was certain that this was going to be a fun build, if nothing else, the mine roller setup would be a very interesting subassembly. Beforehand my biggest question mark was the set of paints, and how they'd behave in my airbrush.

Guidelines

Who knew what had happened to me in the last decades but lately I've started everything with the instructions. Enough mistakes and disasters under my belt, perhaps?

The general painting instructions didn't seem too bothersome, mostly they wanted me to paint it green. I hadn't thought of it one bit, because it was mostly going to be Soviet green anyway. Right now the topmost winterish one intrigued me the most, but like I said, a basic green would also work just fine.

Decals were surprisingly few in number. Four different unit numbers, a tactical sign, three silly red stars and a catchphrase.

The catchphrase intrigued me, as I wasn't known for my skills in Russian. The second word did start with "Rod" and as I somehow knew that motherland was "rodina", I anchored into that. Maybe it could have said "for the motherland!" or something like it? Our friend, the G translated me after a couple of attempts that "to motherland" == "На Родину" and if you ignored the first character that looked like a number three, it was pretty much that. Did it mean "Let's go home!" or "You go home!"? I had no idea but was left wondering.

A bit later I played with the translator, as the phrase kept bothering me. The text was supposed to be Za Rodinu - for the motherland. So I guessed decently, even though confirming it required searching for proper cyrillic letters and playing backwards from there.

 

Piece sets

Hmh. Floppy tracks in four acts, two per side. These would be funny, they were even painted metallic and that was new to me. Obviously we couldn't leave them like that, but it was fun.

Thinking really hard I thought I had maybe had a model with this kind of a two-part tracks, but usually they had been one per side. Never in the history of anything had they been nice, that was for sure.

 

Getting to the tank parts themselves, they looked like a normal amount of pieces. A couple of sprues for the wheels, the turret and its gun in one, apparently the lower hull ate one sprue, then the specialty of this kit came in a few sprues: two for the mine rollers and one for the attachment setup. And the top hull was separately inside the box.

I didn't expect anything weird here. My pareidolia made me chuckle at the expression of the turret, and then I got staring at the armoured tub: it consisted of a few separate pieces unlike Tamiya (or the one Takom) kits. Maybe it had enough support structure so that it didn't start scowling like the Hero of the Work on a Monday morning.