Dragon Saladin Armoured Car

[alextheblue]

I had intended doing this one as a full build thread, but it didn't quite work out as planned. Recently I've been battling with a Bradley M3A3 dio and have been struggling with the ACU pattern on the figures uniforms. I was sat gazing at a half finished figure not really pleased with my work, when the box art for the Saladin caught my eye as it sat unassumingly under my desk. Putting down the figure, I lifted the box on to my desk for no other reason than to admire the picture on the lid. It was then that the voices started, "go on, lift it, take the lid off! What harm can it do, you're only going to take a sneaky peek".

Maybe it was the hypnotic tone of the mysterious voice, or maybe I had been entranced by some ancient model-making muse, but before I knew it, there was glue and paint everywhere and the following was sat before me.







As I'm sure you're all aware this is one of the Black Label series from Dragon and as such I believe it's meant to be more of a "budget" offering. It still retains all of the detail that you expect with more recent Dragon kits, but without all the frills and extras. The moulding is very good with no flash, but the box does seem very devoid of plastic and only a single piece of PE. The instructions are actually quite good, for Dragon and the decals appear to be of the usual Dragon quality. In terms of the build, the kit went together very well with no real issues. For me, the left hand side fender needing a bit of gentle persuasion, but there were no real dramas. The only thing that I do have a gripe about and it's only a real minor one, is with the vision ports. There are no "holes" for clear plastic parts, they are just moulded out of a single piece of grey styrene. No biggie, for the more fastidious amongst us, I am sure you could cut these holes and leave them blank.

Decals and a wash next and then a bit of light weathering and this one will be done, which gets me right back to square-one - just how the hell am I going to paint that ACU pattern!

Thanks for taking a look.

[Nige201980]

I'm loving the look of that mate.