IS-2 Soviet heavy tank 1:72 Zvezda - Kit Review

 

We come to the third of Zvezda's 1:72 tanks that I acquired recently....the best summary I can think of is...I loved the hull, chassis and turret...absolutely HATED the tracks. I shall explain as we go hah.

 

Here we have an ill omen....what a GREAT place to affix the sprue joins, right in between delicate spokes...I do not possess clippers THAT needle like hah. Had to make some risky maneuvers with a scalpel.

Here we come to the portent of the omen...the mother fu%&ing tracks. As I mentioned in depth in my King Tiger review...it is often the habit of manufacturers to make these tracks too short/tight for the wheels they have to fit around. Either resulting in split tracks or bent wheels. (They seem to think a thin piece of plastic, weakened by polystyrene cement is going to handle the pressure of you bending what is effectively a wide rubber band around it.)
Essentially, in this case...both things happened, the tracks broke...and they bent not only the froward idler wheel out of shape, but also the much heftier sprocket wheel.

Look at this mess....the actual link point is glossy from the dousing of glue, and super glue it took to hold it, and has evidently split in several places on the forward part over the idler wheel. I literally cut it into smaller track segments, and super glued them individually with a bit of spacing to relieve tension on the rest of the track length.
I then glued the rest of the tracks in place, with copious amounts of swearing in made up Russian, and then applied liberal amounts of filler over the gaps which will be modelled as heavy mud and debris upon painting.
The saving grace of accidents/flaws in kit building...you can always cover mistakes up with debris, damage and general filth hah.

Moving on...*deep calming breath* besides the tracks, the rest of the kit was VERY nice. Really nice detailings and a good texture to the turret. The tow cable at the rear was particularly nice and looks distinctive, and the DSHk AA gun on the turret cupola is a very nice touch, with good detailing itself.

 The finished comrade! I liked the kit overall, and would definitiely buy more...IF, I can find a reasonably priced individual track set. In the meantime though I will experiment with other manufacturers to see how I find those. Apart from that I like the rest.
(Alterations)
As you can see there is a tiny bit of gap showing where the turret halves joined. Will be filling that, and also take note that I drilled the gun barrel out myself, it comes with a closed end, but the muzzle break itself is hollow through so it works quite nicely.