Russian Bronekorpus tanks painted up/mini-review

[Momotaro]

After Eilif showed us the cheap Scifi tanks you can get on eBay from Russia (search for Bronekorpus tank), I thought I would investigate and ordered some.

Original post is here: http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/six-dollar-tanks-from-russia.html

The attraction of these is 1) they're ridiculously cheap; and 2) they come with a ton of parts to make what you like - APCs, tanks or missile launchers.  What's not to like?

So my order was for six of the beasties, coming to about £33 including postage.  They took about a month to arrive.  Nice solid plastic, a few mouldlines but nothing serious.  Tons and tons of options.

They took a couple of hours to prep and assemble - the basic tank comes in about seven or eight pieces, including single-piece tracks.  

I kept the turrets loose and painted up some missiles and more tank turrets with missiles for variation.  A lot of the bits also take well to magnetising, although you'll have fun with the turrets as you'll need to chop down the post that slots into the hole in the main body.

Painting and weathering were both by brush - they pop a little more in the flesh.  They're posed here against 28mm Dreamforge figures on 30mm bases.  Done here in the style of the battle tanks and APCs of a Famous Wargames Company...

Usual apologies for paintjobs, photos etc.

Conclusions:  they're a little small - painted up as an APC, you can see the figure's heads are as high as the top of the tracks.  But they'll be fine on the tabletop, and you really will have loads of fun choosing loadouts and swappable bits.  Definitely worth the money and time.

[Daeothar]

You did some great work there, and the price can't be beat, obviously.

As you said though; they're certainly smallish, so I wouldn't use them for 28mm personally, but they might work well at 15mm perhaps?

[Inso]

Small is good... if you have a Squat/Space Dwarf/Grymn army

Nice review and definitely worth a punt

[The_Beast]

I was reminded of the Technolog tanks that caused quite an uproar for being small... in 15mm. ;-:=

They were, indeed, but again, just a bit, and quite usable to my eye (okay, drop the pistol belt to slid through the hatch). Correspondingly un-dear as well. There really have been some interesting things out of that company, mostly transported by Pegasus Hobbies, from gothic/steampunk terrain to not-Space Marines.

I found searching for "Bronekorpus" worked rather better, by the way.

Doug

[Steve F]

I have to say that they don't look too small for 28mm at all to me.  A Challenger 2 is only 2.5m tall, a Warrior 2.8m (and a Scimitar only 2.1m).  If those infantry are 1.8m tall, then, allowing for bases, the tanks look about right.  They'd be colossal in 15mm.

[Momotaro]

Bronekorpus is right - thanks Doug! Changed!

Probably too big for 15mm, as Steve says, but I hadn't thought about Grymm... hmmm...  I have a feeling that they will be fine once they're on the table.

There seem to be photos of a lot of related models on the internet - I'd love to see a whole range of products across here.  The Robogear stuff was, with a couple of exceptions, a bit too weird/toylike, but these are good.

[Gibby]

They are neither too big nor too small for me to happily destroy them in some tabletop battles. Not with a hammer when I inevitably lose, of course....

Nice work!

[The_Beast]

...They'd be colossal in 15mm.

Right-o. Sorry, they had/have(?) OTHER tanks that WERE a bit wee for 15mm. (Edit: Which had a mech vibe; I think under the Z.O.D. line.)

A lad in the USSR was selling them as 15mm, which is what the manufacturer had on them, but he was castigated by a fair number of folk.

I thought they were small but usable, as long as you didn't look too closely at the hatches.

They also do the roughly 28mm Robogear stuff that has lots of small vehicles and walkers. I don't care for most of the designs as deployed, but as parts for other projects...!

Doug

[eilif]

Missed these when they first went up, but they are great!  I'm glad I inspired you to buy them and maybe now you've inspired me to paint mine up.

As for size, they are actually pretty close to perfect. With the bulkyness of 28-32mm figs, the influence of 40k and more-recently the absolutely enormous Dreamforge APC, most folks don't realize just how small many armored vehicles really are.  I grew up near Cantigny Park which has a pretty good tank farm
 http://www.firstdivisionmuseum.org/museum/exhibits/tankpark/default.aspx
and it's surprising how compact tanks actually are. I specifically recall the m113 seeming like a tiny little tin can.

These would be far to large for anything in 15mm unless you were trying to make some sort of 40k'ish mega-tank.  However if you like your tanks BIG I agree that they'd be great for Squats/Grymn and classic 25mm such as Denizen's wonderful sci-f armies.

As to Robogear, there were a number of good designs mixed in with the wierdness, but in general they required some modification. I've got a number of them in my 28mm Mecha forces and they work well as light mechs. Here's a couple of mine for scale.
L to R: Heavily modified Robogear, mostly stock (a few piece swaps between kits) Robogear and a Macross model.