The Maus was a German World War Two super heavy tank that was completed in late 1944. Five were ordered, but only two hulls and one turret were completed before the testing grounds were captured by advancing Soviet forces It is the heaviest fully enclosed armoured fighting vehicle ever built at 188 metric tons. It was armed with a 128mm gun and a coaxial 75mm gun. The Maus was intended to punch holes through enemy defences in the manner of an immense “breakthrough tank”, whilst taking almost no damage to any components.
I’ve always been impressed with the 1/100th scale models from Zvezda as well as being good quality plastic miniatures they are also reasonably priced. My only real complaint is that the other types of models in the range are designed to fit the box, not the same scale of the vehicles. So the infantry figures and artillery pieces, are 1/72nd, some aircraft are 1/144th and even 1/200th. I have even seen 1/350th boats in the range. This is a pity. The 1/100th scale vehicles though fit well with my other 15mm models.
I was intrigued the other day to see that my local model shop had the German super heavy tank Maus in their range of Zvezda kits.
I think it might have been priced wrongly at £3.50 as similar boxes (i.e. the bigger boxes) were £7.00. So I bought two for potential objectives or models for alternate history games set at the end of World War Two.
The model comprises two plastic sprues and look detailed and I think it will capture the feel of this monstrous tank.
The sprues have sat around for a while, but having recently purchased a similar 1/100th scale 15mm Maus from Battlefront I was intrigued to see the comparison.
The next stage was to construct the models, even though it says snap-fit, decided to glue the model together. I was going add some weight to the model too, so give it some heft and ballast. I think a super heavy tank, even at 1/100th scale, should be “super heavy”. However, I didn’t have any weights to hand. The model was not as simple as I thought it would be to construct, I had issues with getting the gun the right way around, but got there in the end.
This is a large 15mm model, as compared to the M18 Hellcat in the same scale.
The next stage was a white undercoat.
I gave the model a base coat of Army Painter Desert Yellow Spray.
The next stage will be painting the tracks and the camouflage.