Its that time of year again to look back on past builds and look forward to the coming years and all it brings. These build review threads used to be common, but last year there weren't many, so hopefully we can re ignite the tradition.
As always, this past year has been filled with some great laughs and lots of fun as well as lots of greats builds and people helping each other. For myself, I have had some builds out of the norm, finally gotten back to doing armour dio's and expanded my experience with scratchbuilding.
I started the year with something on the large side. Merit's 1/18th 88mm Flak 36 is a nice kit but left room for improvement and this meant lots of styrene sheet, rod and strip, and of course lots of help from the forum with links, personal pics and pointing out what I had missed.
This was followed by a couple of stand alone figures which was new to me. The first was a 1/4 vinyal darth Vader figure.
And this was swiftly followed by a 70mm white metal Stormtrooper from Knight Models.
Then onto the other dark Side. While I have built a few armour models since I got back into the hobby in 2008 after 5 years away, I have not completed any of them as diorama's. I was determined not to add any more to the waiting list. So, for my first armour dio in about 12 years, I built Tamiya's 1/35th Pz III Ausf N.
And not being satisfied with 1, I followed it with a second, Dragon's 1/35th pre Zimmed panther Ausf G, a really lovely kit to build and really well detailed, so well I only used half of the PE set I had got for it.
After that, time for my first aircraft of the year. I am a big Stuka fan and for the JU 87GB, I decided to build a version not often seen, Special Hobby's 72nd Ju87A-2
next up, Dragons 72nd Do 335B-4.
Then, it was back to some armour. Tamiya's 1/35th Su-85 was a nice change, but of course, it had to be in German markings.
Unfortunately, my attempt not to add any more armour to the list for dio's didn't quite pay off. Tamiya's 35th Marder III was a challenging build but nice to get done.
And then, to finish off the year, just this weekend I have wrapped up 2 more builds. The Sd.Kfz is my favourite vehicle like the Stuka is my favourite aircraft. But while I have built a 251 before, it has no dio, so I was determined to complete AFV Club's 35th 251/3 Ausf D properly.
And finally, Eduard's tiny 144 Ju 87G-2.
And that it for the year. I am really looking forward to 2015. I will be building my first all resin kits and my first 32nd aircraft as well as finally doing a dio that I have wanted to do for over 15 years.
Thanks for looking. I hope we will see more of you posting your own threads with your past years builds. Its always good to look back at what we have achieved as well as to look forward to what's ahead.