PzKfw IVH - Warlord Games vs Rubicon

Another weekend has passed without much happening on the painting and gaming front. I still have three vehicles from Mad Bob Miniatures still waiting to be finished along with M1s, M113s, M106s and modern infantry for Team Yankee. I have miniatures prepped for ReaperCon in October, hopefully I'll get that diorama down this time. So what better thing to do than start another little project!

To be fair it is at least going hand in hand with the WWII Normandy effort. I received a package on Friday from Rubicon that contained a PzKfw IV (F, G or H), a STuG III G, German and Allied stowage sets and a couple more sets of decals. Since a Warlord Games package had arrived earlier with a PzKfw IV (F, G or H), I figured it might be useful to build them side by side and see which one might be better or if it was just to close to call.

The list price for the Warlord Games version is $32.00, the Rubicon Models version is gong to run you $29.00. Odds are the way I typically order shipping is going to be free so that's not a factor, although delivery time is. Warlord Games is coming from the UK, while Rubicon is coming from the US so I can make a Rubicon order on Monday and actually have it by Friday.

Step one is to open up the boxes and see what we get inside:

Here is what comes in the Warlord Games box (which is slightly smaller than the Rubicon box):

These instructions are pretty simple, I would like to see something a little more in depth but I shouldn't have any problems assembling this kit using these.

Here you can see that the running gear is cast as a single unit to which you add the tracks (which are on the first sprue)

And here is what you get in the Rubicon box:

These are very similar to the instructions I would expect to find in a regular model kit.

The running gear on the Rubicon model is handled in a slightly different manner with the tracks included as part of the unit.

Right now I'm not seeing to many out right differences. I think Rubicon has better instructions, or at least more steps. I do like the Rubicon decals better there is just a greater variety on it compared to the Warlord one. Both kits come with three sprues. The biggest difference I see is in the approach to the running gear. The Rubicon kit has fewer parts so it should go together quite a bit faster than the Warlord kit. In that respect the Warlord kit more closely resembles a display model and I want to say that Italeri is producing their plastic kits but I'm not positive on that. If they are then that approach makes a lot of sense.

Both kits can be built up as either an F2, G or H, while the Warlord version can also be built as an F1 (short 75). Since I'll be playing mostly late war I'll be building these as H's which really means, visually, they will get the side and turret skirts.