I’m back after a bit of a hiatus spent travelling: both for work and fun. One thing that did arrive before my departure was a Ke-Ho tank for Dystopian Legions. I haven’t seen much in the way of online information about this little kit so I figured I might document my experience with it. This also gives me a chance to try out the new camera rig – which consists of the old lenses, but with a much improved body. The old body was 7 years old (a Nikon D40). The new one is more modern and also a higher end model (a D7100).

Packaging:
The box is surprisingly thin: about the same depth (and about the same size overall) as the Army Starter boxes. The box style is a coloured card slip around a plain corrugated box? Inside there are six bags: 4 bubble wrap bags containing various resin pieces, a bag containing all the metal pieces and a few smaller resin pieces and another bag containing the cards that go with the Ke-Ho. Everything is very well packed and quite secure with no breaks, bends or signs of damage. So while a small box, this speaks more to the efficiency and security of packing than any skimping on Spartan’s part.

The Bits:
To start off, there’s quite a few. The Ke-Ho is actually quite a good size model and it’s in essence a ball so to fit in a box about 5cm (2″) deep is going to require some Ikea like flat packing. The Ke-Ho is pretty much a model kit and is going to take a bit if assembly, so if your experience is mostly metal miniatures with one or two pieces glued on then be ready for a bit more construction than you’re used to. In all I counted 30 parts. Most of the kit is resin, but there are a couple of metal bits too. Here’s the audit:

Resin:

• 2* discs that are the left and right of the Ke-Ho,



• 8* curved track pieces,



• 4* quarter circles that will make up the front, back, top and bottom (3 different molds),



• 1* main gun shield,
• 4* flamethrower/machine gun sponson turrets,
• 2* rocket sponson turrets,
• 1* trailer.



• 1* main gun barrel,
• 1* funnel,

Metal:

• 2* flamethrower barrels,
• 2* machine gun barrels,
• 2* trailer wheels.

Paper:

• Section activation card,
• 2* Game card.

Component Quality:
In general the casting is good. Spartan’s specialty is resin and these are well cast. There are a few gates and pieces that will need to be cut off the fit the pieces. However they are mostly in places that will be hidden so are no concern. Overall the resin here is all good – so well done Spartan Games

With the advent of the Dystopian Legions line, Spartan’s metal casting has improved. There’s not a lot of metal in this kit so there’s not much to say. However, there is still a bit of flash on all the metal parts so they aren’t great. However, there aren’t heaps of them so it won’t take too long to clean up

Conclusion:
A decent little kit. It’s not cheap, around $100 AUD from local sources. However you do get a fair bit of resin.

I’m going to spend a bit of time on this model and try to do it justice. In the next article I’ll start to test fit and clean all the pieces and start the construction. I plan to magnetise the sponson turrets to enable these to be swapped out: that will require some magnets and a little piece of my own creation.