World War II Project - Unboxing - Rubicon M32B1 Armored Recovery Vehicle

This M32B1 Armored Recovery Vehicle is one of the newest kits released by Rubicon Models. I have been eagerly awaiting this kit since it was announced, which is probably over a year ago when Rubicon starting showing off the drawings in their forum. This is my first full resin (well almost full resin) kit from Rubicon so I was very curious to see how it differed from Warlord Games and Trenchworx, I can certainly say that it didn't disappoint.

I will admit that there is probably no place on the gaming for this piece I pretty much just had to add it to the inventory. Since it won't be a gaming piece I think I will build this one up in a deployed position rather than in travel mode, which would have been my choice if it was going to appear on the gaming table. Fully deployed I suppose it could work as an objective marker in a game.

It came in the same small brown box as the M4A3E2 with the addition of one plastic sprue which will provide the tracks and the lower hull. The resin and pewter parts come bubble wrapped in separate bags and of course there is a complete set of instructions just like you would receive with the Rubicon plastic kits. The only thing it lacks are decals, it would have been nice if one of the generic sets of Allied decals had been included. That, however, is a pretty minor quibble at this point and its not like I don't have a ton of extra decals at this point.

The resin castings are outstanding. Instead of a solid upper hull it is cast "hollow" which certainly saves a lot of resin and makes for a much lighter model. It also gives modelers an opportunity to some extra detail in the hull I suppose. While I did find some areas of light flash that will need a very small amount of cleaning I didn't find any bubbles. There is a lot of resin there and my eyes are old but at this point the resin parts appear to be near perfect castings. The pewter pieces are the same high quality as the resin. A fair number of them had "snapped" off the sprues but everything was there and the castings were nice and crisp with very light mold lines. All of this should clean up very quickly.

I think this kit is going to be a winner, in fact now that I have two of these resin kits from Rubicon I'm going to jump them in the waiting list and I'll be working on them after I finish the U304 (f)s.