Question: General Military Model Inquiry

Personally, I believe in telling folks that are just starting out with armor to "Crawl-walk-run" when they first "approach the bench"...

For beginners, or those just getting into the genre of modeling military vehicles, you really can't go wrong with Tamiya kits...  They aren't as "accurate" as say, the latest Dragon releases, but when you add in the fact that you probably don't want to drop 80 bucks on a kit that you're afraid of screwin' up, Tamiya makes the best mix of detailed vehicles coupled with a lower price-tag than Dragon, Trumpeter, AFV Club, or Italeri...

The newer kit releases will hit you right out of the box with the sheer number of parts (some have aroung 400) to contend with (about half of which are individual track links).  Once you've gotten 6 or 8 Tamiya kits under your belt, you'll probably then wanna "move up" into the expensive kits... 

Early Tamiya kits, like the M41 Walker Bulldog, T-62A, T-34/76, Panther A, Sdkfz 251/1,  Willys Jeep, Bren Gun Carrier, and some others from the 80s/90s that are in the 25.00 to 35.00 price-range will go a long way in giving you fairly easy builds with a fair amount of detail and a lot of room to improve your detail-painting/weathering skills on before you jump into 50.00-80.00 kits, when the armor/tactical vehicle bug bites you fully... 

As for accuracy, there are some of those kits that aren't exactly what they could have been, but unless you have a bunch of research material available, you won't notice much of the inaccuracies...   Like the Tamiya T-72As shallow turret... Never noticed it all until I was used a real T-62A for reference... 

Ditto what Hans said.

There is a TON of stuff out there to choose from right now, but the challenge is you could easily pick a kit that is so complicated that you get overwhelmed, frustrated, confused, and fed up.  The Tamiya kits, especially the older ones, are very straight forward builds and pretty nicely detailed.  They are good places to start to get 'your feet back under you'.  The other good thing about a lot of these Tamiya kits is you can often find them relatively cheaply on EBay or at sites like www.armorama.com (look in the forums at the 'Buy, Sell, Trade' section).

Companies like DML, Trumperter, Hobby Boss, to name a few, also are making some great subjects, but they do tend to be a little more complex.

One bit of advice, as you start to pick some kits, go to a site like armorama, or www.missing-lynx.com or www.perthmilitarymodelling.com/ and look to see if they have done a review of your kit.  You might be able to avoid a problem or confusion by checking those build reviews first.

You can also post any kit you are thinking about on here and get some feedback from people who have built it.

Good luck to you.

Hi,

Welcome back to the hobby. I myself a returning soul too

All of the above plus: when you see something you like, just google it and you'll possibly find a lot of articles (build and in-box) about the kit. Most of the articles give you a pretty good idea about it.

Cem.

Hans gave you the answer...Get the basics back...hull assembly tracks and basic painting. There is plenty of time for the 500 part kit with PE and Indy tracks later.....enjoy simple first

Rounds Complete!!

I build mostly aircraft in 1/72 but I enjoy the ocassinall armor model.

I agree. The 1/35 scale T-34/85 of Tamiya has few parts and it's fun to build. The Tiger I has a little more parts and is a blast of fun.

Also look into Tamiya's 1/48 line of WWII armor. Smalle and not as expensive as their current 1/35 counterparts but with all the benefits of modern tooling