15mm Sherman Tanks from Plastic Soldier Company
August 18, 2011 by darrell
Video Sponsors: Dark Age - Infinity - Wayland Games
More from The Plastic Soldier Company as Darrell has a look at their latest model, a 15mm Sherman Tank.
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I’ve been struggling with finding the money to get my Flames of War British army off the ground recently, but now I’ve seen these guys I think I know what to do! Good find guys!
As far as the two Sherman boxed sets go the only real downside is if you want Firefly’s (which you do in a British Tank Platoon) you will have to look at other companies minis. But 5 tanks at the price they are asking is a real bargain.
I wonder if they’re thinking of doing a Firefly. It wouldn’t be a big change (only need to do a turret sprue).
I think the Plastic Soldier Company is giving Flames of War a run for there money. With the price tag they have and quality as well, it really flies in the face with the pricing FoW have for the same thing but less models.
correction, FoW sells a platoon size of 5 but at $85. I’ll go with PSC $27 set thank you.
The plastic soldier company is producing some well priced great alternatives to the more ‘prestigious ‘ model manufacturers.
I also agree with Darrell. I would rather have all models as plastics rather than faff around with resins and metals that often seem supernaturally immune to the adhesive affects of super glue.
I picked up both boxes of these and I’m currently putting them together. I also picked up the FoW start set that has 3 Shermans and 3 Stugs. Comparing the two sets, I prefer the plastic Shermans.
I’ve been looking at FoW for a long time but the prices put me off, now I can collect a couple of basic forces for comparatively little.
I’ll mix FoW, PSC and Forged in Battle to get the force that I wont.
Cheers Tony
I recently saw another review of these where a built one was put alongside a FoW resin version.
Not only are these far cheaper and easier to clean up but the wee details are a heck of a lot sharper or at least they seemed to be.
I don’t actually play 15mm but I love little tanks and I can’t wait till these guys come out with some more.
One slight thing Darrell didn’t notice, you don’t quiiite have enough parts to build both turrets, you only get 2 of the little hatch bits and you need 3 to make both turrets. Not that it would be difficult to make a spare hatch out of putty or something, and if you are making the smaller turret with only the single hatch then for every two of them you build you’ve got the parts spare to give one larger turret the two hatches it needs.
There are also two body versions made by PSC; the M4A2 and M4A1.
I rather like the look of this. It’s clearly a gaming piece rather than a 200 piece model, and that’s a good thing when you need lots of them on a tabletop.
I wasn’t going to do 15mm, but…
I LOVE Shermans of all types and scales, The 1:1 scale ones are bigger than you think! 🙂 These are the best I’ve seen in 15mm and although I decided against getting involved in FoW (mainly due to cost) I am seriously tempted to get some of these just for fun! 🙂 Well done PSC!!
I don’t get why so many think Flames of War is expensive. Compared to your average Warhammer army it’s only about 30-50 % of the cost (in Sweden at least). Of course, that said I’d really like to get my hands on some of these tanks and I hope that The Plastic Soldier Company can provide some much needed competition in this area of wargaming. After all, it’s not like Battlefront can boast much in the way of intellectual properties, trademarks and copyrights on World War 2 though if it had been Games Workshop I’m sure they would have tried!
To your first question; Compare quality and prices from PSC or Forged in Battle to Battlefront. When you have more companies that provide cheaper product of better quality you don’t call them underpriced, you call the BF overpriced – expensive. They just don’t set the standard, I’m afraid.
Oh I can not disagree with you there, but my statement still stand, many people think that Flames of War is expensive to start playing, even many people playing Warhammer!
I see, that indeed doesn’t make much sense.
I also think GW is expensive.
Personally I’m interested in what Battlefront fans make of this…will they say the same things some GW fans say about Mantic?
The tanks look pretty good, but I have the same complaint with this kit as with the T34 – the treads are separate. That could get fiddly for a newbie…gap filling isn’t easy. Diorama/objective marker makers will love the ability to have a tank with damaged tracks though.
I prefer the tracks as separate pieces, because they can make them so much better looking. They don’t look terribly hard assembly jobs to me, but I haven’t actually tried building any. I suspect I will though, and I’ll put something on my blog (www.quirkworthy.com) about it when I do.
I had no problems putting my Panzer IV platoons together (i can see no reason why the other models in the range would differ) The main difficulty i had was deciding on which variant to build 😉
I’m waiting for their German SdKfz 251 half-tracks to be released, then my dream of a full Genpanzerte SS-Panzergrenadierkompanie can come true 😀
If I didn’t had half a dozen of the starter set FoW ones I’d look into these. I still might but I’ll wait until I need more before doing so.
The US called them Ronsons. Ronsons were lighters, not cigarettes. The tag line in Ronson ads was “Lights the first time!”, alluding to needing a single shot to ignite a Sherman
got a box of these as they looked nice and fairly easy to put together even for my big club fingers,
only bit i did not like about them was they are little fragile for my gaming, but like the level of detail, even if a bit to exact, but i think that is the from CAD work and it is a precise medium.
But for me will pay the extra for the resin tanks, just prefer the weight of the models and durability.
Not sure I agree with the price comments for me I think that PSC are just going cheaper than FOW, not wether this works as a business model, guessonly time will tell.
Hope they carry to grow and improve.
these kits are really nice i have a box of panzers and german infatry from The Plastic Soldier Company easy to put together and alot cheaper than fow i love fow but its hard for me to get fow so ive switched to The Plastic Soldier Company
TREADHEAD GEEK ALERT!
The model Darrell built up was a M4 A3E8.(British Designation Sherman III A) used by American combat command in Europe from early .1944.(Armed with a 76mm L55 main gun firing HE and HVAP rounds.)
The other turret option in the box was for the standard M4 A3 (‘Sherman IV ‘British Designation.)Armed with a standard 75mm L41 main gun firing HE and APCBC rounds.
The other larger diameter barrel is for the 105 mm Howitzer variant.( Sherman IV B British designation.) A single 105mm armed Sherman was often attached to the Sherman Company HQ, to add fire support options.(Longer range HE and smoke capability.105mm HEAT rounds were avalable but were quite unreliable so often not used.).
Realy nice models great balance of detail and ruggedness Ideal for gameing …
(The nickname Ronson was because the advert for Ronson Lighters was ‘.. Light up first time every time..’ Due to poor ammunition stowage and internal layout early war shermans were prone to ‘brew up’ at the slightest provocation.)
Whoops.
Typo.
The M4A3 E8 was called Sherman IV A ,by the Brittish army.(Not III A).
And was used from early July 1944.
I wish there was an edit function …..
The 75mm version (M4 A2/A3 ,Sherman III/IV) was used in Tunisa by British and American forces in 1943.
Note the British focres mainly used 75mm gun option and thier own ‘tank killer’ version utilising the exellent 17pounder A/T gun, firing APCBC rounds.
This tank kiler version was called ‘Firefly’ and designated by ‘VC’ by the British