French Battle Tank B1 bis

Ron Garcia
This was a bucket list kit for me. Ever since I got interested in history and model building way back when, I always wanted some company to make a kit of this tank. However, when I bought it, it went into my stash as so many other kits have gone. I finally decided to build all the French tanks I have in my stash and now it's done. It was worth the wait. An overall excellent kit and easy to build.

The tracks were a welcome surprise as they snapped together easily. Just make sure you don't go long with a run because it you pull them apart, you will snap off the locking pins.

The only difficult thing is the paint job. This is the sixth French tank I've built in a row with their crazy - but definitely eye catching - camouflage schemes. I'm getting pretty good at painting them, but it is tedious masking off those hard edged colors. Silly Putty and a Micron pen if your friend when painting them.

Having already built Tamiya's R35 and S35, it's disappointing that all the figures are basically the same. Since this was the first produced of those three, the figure sitting in the back of the turret makes sense (the face is definitely odd looking, though). I didn't want all three of these tanks with pretty much the same figure sitting with the same pose, so I closed up the S35 and used the figure from that kit for this one. The face is big improvement. Anyway, I wish Tamiya would have been more creative with their follow on kit's figures. Just a nitpick.

That aside, this is a great kit. You 204 people who still have it in your stash (at the time of this writing), build it already!