PMMS
Trumpeter
German Artillery Crew
(Mörser Karl)

1/35 Kit No. 00409

Review by Terry Ashley

Trumpeter follow their crew set for the Leopold (Set #00406) with this set for the recent released Mörser Karl and consists of eight full figures in various poses and a selection of weapons and personal equipment from the previous Trumpeter German Infantry figure sets.

There are 38 parts for the figures and another 57 for the accessories moulded in light grey plastic which is quite easy to work with and the main cleanup is fairly large moulding seams on each part that compromised the detail in a few places, so take care when removing these.

Seven of the figures have the upper and lower body moulded together with the eighth having separate body parts while some have arms moulded with the body, others with one arm separate and others with both arms separate while all have separate heads and head gear apart from one which is bare headed.

Two Officer figures wear full length great coats standing in a relaxed pose with arms held at the sides or behind their backs and wearing Officers caps while five others wear the cotton soldiers shirt with rolled up sleeves in various poses from relaxed to action and the final figure wears the field grey tunic and black leather jackboots with steel helmet.

The detail on the figures is rather soft overall and quite basic unfortunately with no fabric seams on the trousers or sleeves while the pocket and other uniform details are not well defined but should come up okay with careful painting but do something about those huge soles on the boots as they look like a serious case of club foot but you can easily thin these down.

Some of the anatomical features are not as good as they could be with the facial features being a lot better than those on the recent Iraq 2003 figure set but the hands are not well defined with one figure (E) having a right hand noticeable bigger than the left hand and the left arm on figure C is again noticeable larger than the right arm especially around the shoulder area.

The fit of the parts will need some work especially the arm fit as the locating lugs on the parts will need trimming in some cases and some filling and trimming with others, test fitting will determine what is needed and where? The locating lugs on the top of the heads for the head gear will also need trimming to get a good fit of the caps but easily dealt with.

Some of the figures are larger than others which is not a problem really as in a group of eight people you will have varying sized bodies so this gives some additional variation to the figures.

The weapons and equipment is nicely done with the MG42 having good details and separate tripod, ammo boxes and 7.62mm ammo belts while the MP40s have separate stocks and typical ammo pouches while the nice looking Kar98s only need slings added and all the other equipment will look good when painted and can be added to the figures as required.

The box top has colour illustrations of the figures and equipment that will be a useful painting guide and there is also a large colour sheet included showing the assembled figures but the part numbers don’t match those of the parts on the sprues and are quite confusing but by ignoring the printed part numbers it is easy to match the parts as they are clearly numbered on the sprues as A1, A2 etc for figure A and F1, F2 etc for figure F and so on.

Conclusion:
This figure set has some nicely animated poses but the details are basic when comparing to the Trumpeter Leopold Gun Crew (Set #00406) and Dragons German Artillery Crew (Set #6201) but with careful painting and assembly should come up okay to add some life to their excellent Mörser Karl kits (Kit #00208/9) and the nice weapons and equipment are a bonus.

Weapons from the Trumpeter set
Trumpeter

The Sprues:

TrumpeterTrumpeterTrumpeter
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Page created 6 March 2005

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