Kagero - MiniTopcolors no.25 - "Barbarossa" 1941 Decal and book review

 









Recently Kagero has had a massive release schedule in their “decal and book” (– or is it “book and decal?”) range of titles – Kagero have a few different ranges but most stick to the “profile/picture/decal” format. Today we examine the “Barbarossa 1941” Title and see how the decals go on to a test kit.

MiniTopcolors, no.25 - Barbarossa 1941

Written by: Stanisław Jabłoński, Jacek Pasieczny, Arkadiusz Wróbel

Pages: 18

Decal schemes: 8

Decal scales: 1/72, 1/48 % 1/35

ISBN: 978-83-62878-04-8

RRP: 16.80 Euro

Available from: The Kagero Bookshop online

Today we will review a new release by Kagero in there ‘top colours’ range. They say all good things come in small packages - well that also prove true here with this Decal and small book combo, or will it be not focussed enough? Let’s have a look

This release focuses on operation Barbarossa, (the German invasion of Russia) not another book on German AFV’s! I hear you scream, well yes and no, The whole book can be covered by a single piece of A4 paper, and despite being only 15 pages long, this book is defiantly a must have, so why’s it so good? And what makes this different than the other books on Barbarossa? Well for starters not only are there 18 beautiful colour profiles (more on these later) but you also get a sheet of decals for every AFV shown, now for me this is possibly the best bit, in 1:72, 1:48 and 1:35! So regardless if you only build 1:72 or 1:35 or have a 1:48 scale panzer III in the stash and want a different marking scheme that the one the kit provides, this book is for you!

The Decal sheet fits snugly into the book, so no worries about losing them, they are printed by Cartograf, this is the same company who prints decals for Dragon (anyone who’s built a dragon kit will know how good these decals are) they are clearly printed with good colour reference to the colour profiles and have little carrier film, so less chance of ‘slivering’ the decals are split into ‘groups’ each ‘group’ is for a colour profile shown in the book, but be careful here as there isn’t a lot of difference size wise between the 1:48 KV2 decals and the 1:35 ones, so check and double check! 

There are also bonus decals on the sheets; these are surrounded by a solid black border, while the other decals are surrounded by a broken black border. The decals are by far some of the best i have seen, and having never built a 1:72 scale kit, these might just change that!

The Colour profiles are mainly German but that’s because the Germans had so many different machines at the same time! They over the panzer 1’s 2’s 3’s and 4’s as well as a ‘Bison’ 15cm S.I.G self propelled gun, perfect for Dragons kit, also included is aSd.kz.250/3 and a Sd.kfz.221. there are also Russian machines included, not as many as the Germans, but the T-34 makes an appearance as well as a captured KV2, The colour profiles are again the best I’ve seen and are not just, here’s a Panzer 3 in Russia in 1941, its grey. They tell you which model of panzer 3, the panzer division it served with, and it quotes which RAL number it was painted, a nice touch I think, they have also gone the extra mile by ‘weathering’ them, they so how the tank would of looked in the field with mud and dust build ups.

We had agreed to put these decals to the test, so a simple test bed was made from plastic card and rod, the idea with the rod was to see how the decal would handle these shapes and if they would tear, Because the main 2 colours are grey and green, it was a good idea to split the test into green and grey, Decals for the 1:48 KV-1 was used and decals form one of the ‘Bonus’ sections (a Su152) i choose the KV-1 decals because it is a rather complex shape and if any of all the decals were to tear, this would be the one, the 1:72 decals were used as well because we wanted to see how the smaller decals would cope. 

Once the rig was built it was sprayed with Games Workshop chaos Black, from the spray can. Vallejo sea grey was sprayed on one half and Russian green the other, once this was dry it received a coat of Johnsons Klear (unfortunately, this is no longer available) the decals were then cut out and one by one dipped in a bowl of Luke warm tap water until they could be moved with the point of a brush (which isn’t very long so take care.)  They were then placed on to the ‘rig’ with the aid of a paint brush, the first one to be ‘tested’ was the KV-1 Decal over the plastic rod, as you can see in the pictures this is no easy shape to get a decal to conform to, but it worked perfectly, no tears and issues, just be careful and take your time!

 All the other decals were just as easy to place, when you look at the pictures you will notice that 2 decals have just been placed on the flat card, this was because we wanted to see if the decals would show any base colour through, but again they held their own and were superb!

Once they were in place any excess water was dabbed of and another coat of Johnsons Klear was sprayed over the top.

The quality of the decals cannot be doubted after adhering like this to such a difficult surface

The pictures aren’t the best as I’d ran out of matt varnish trying to get a decent shot of the decals was a lesson in its self! But the pics speak for themselves, the decal and book combo well work well and will enhance any model.

Lots of good ideas for your early war soviet and German vehicles - which to choose?

 - Whether you’re a die-hard German early war fan, or have a panzer II in need of some different decals, this book is for you, it has everything you need to finish your model; all you have to do is build and paint it! The colour profiles are a good source of inspiration and give a good idea of how these tanks would have looked in the field.   

Nick Lloyd

Thanks to Kagero for supplying us with this decal and book combo - see this Kagero's new releases here