Thanks to the Dastardly Regular Opponent, I got a Rubicon M5A1 kit. Seeing as my Churchill Tank platoon may need some recce boys to watch up ahead, I immediately jumped in to getting it built up!
As you might expect from Rubicon, it’s a pretty fantastic kit. That company has nailed down how to make kits for wargaming – plastic kits that look good but also go together incredibly quickly and with some clever tweak to make assembly pretty painless. As someone who assembled four Churchills from Warlord, having a kit that has single piece tracks is literally perfection. I was able to put this together in a couple of hours during our Monday hobby chat and I’m really happy with it. The Stuart is adorable after all.
I’m also happy they included the ability to build it as a Stuart Kangaroo, with the turret removed and replaced by a ring mount. This is just a turret ring with gun (in this case only a single .50cal rather than the trio included on the sprue) however I’m doing to do some tweaks to add some suitable bits. I think a standing infantryman and a stashed PIAT should be good enough.
The M5A1 has a weird machine gun mount on the side of the turret that Rubicon says to leave unglued. However, pintle mounted MGs for the Brits didn’t seem to be a common addition and so I was about to leave the spot free. Interestingly, I did find an image of one with some form of smoke launcher in it’s place which got me thinking. After a quick trim and finding a spare 2″ mortar in the bits box, my Stuart is now ready to fling smoke. Or pop the equivalent of a hand grenade out just to finish someone off. I still need to add a vehicle commander but my Former Housemate may have bought me some guys who will look rather good.
Next up? I need to do a stowage pass on this tank but then its two Comets to finish the platoon and a CMP to be used as a Jumping Off Point (alongside a few Empress figures to build up a little diorama).