Pat Condray provided me five samples of a new (to me ) range of 20mm SCW armored vehicles released by his company Historical Products. Before even addressing the review samples, I direct the reader to Tanks and Trucks of The Spanish Civil War, by John Wilson, pub. by the Partizan Press and available from Historical Products Company, amongst others. It's the only way you ll be able to make sense of the bewildering variety of home-grown AFVs that saw service in the SCW and it was my main reference in this review. The samples include three armored trucks (two of which are identified on pages 21 and 31 of the reference), an armored tractor (pg 18), and an Euzkadi light tank (pg. 4). The models are resin and generally come with white metal turrets, wheels, and/or tracks. White metal parts had some flash, but nothing excesslve.

The resin castings were in a shiny dark blue that was, frankly, repulsive. A light sanding (take care not to remove rivets...) and an overspray of primer transformed them into quite serviceable gaming models. Granted, large flat surfaces were sometimes crazed, but this, when painting was complete on my samples, merely added character to what were in real life, pretty crudely built improvisations. The only parts you'll need to add to these vehicles will be machine gun and rifle barrels for the various firing ports. Inclusion of a sprue of MG and rifle barrels would be nice.

The tractor and trucks matched Wilson's drawings pretty well; the Euzkadi varied in several instances - I don't know whether this is due to inaccuracy on the model's or drawing's parts, or if the prototypes varied in details. If you do the SCW, I suspect you'll want these - they're not at all bad and are the only 20mm models I know of for the period. Available from the Historical Products Company, c/o Patrick Condray,8234 Kings Arm Drive, Alexandria, VA 22308. - BILL RUTHERFORD

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