Frankenstein Monsters - Zvezda King Tigers with 'Porche' Butlers Printed Models turrets

Hi folks,

Another recent side project for me, partly driven by a new book I picked up during the 1st lockdown. I've a few of these Dennis Oliver books now and find them pretty useful. I also added the Jagdpather, Jagdpanzer and StuG titles to the collections this year. The Tiger book I primarily picked up due to my planned Tiger force based on Schwere SS-Panzerabteilung 101 for 8 August 1944. 

I will admit to being taken with the idea of having a couple of the King Tigers in my collection. 

Given the type of large, scenario style, games we enjoy playing as a group, I'm always on the lookout for bits to add which may add challenge or an interesting learning opportunity. I've read a bit about Operation Goodwood this year and with my growing collection of British armour, thought it would be fun to do a scenario game for that at some point (3 full squadrons by the time I have my Cromwells done). I also thought it would be interesting to have a couple of very big kitties in the collection. 

Unfortunately, Battlefront are not currently producing their Normandy era King Tigers, and Ebay prices are a bit mad. So I went looking for other options. Obviously, I couldn't be satisfied with using the later style turrets (although a very few of these do seem to have made it to Normandy)

I finally picked up a couple of the Zvezda 15mm King Tigers, which come with the later style 'Henschel' turrets. I know these are not the technically correct turret names, but they are the common terms, so I'm sticking to them for now. 

These kits go together pretty easily, although I recommend paying attention to some of the assembly walkthroughs on Youtube as there are a couple of bits which can trip you up. I assembled this beastie whilst playing in Dave D's recent Zoom game, and paid probably less attention that I should have - like not accounting for magnetizing the turret and hull. 

My cunning plan was then - as a trial - to pick up a couple of the earlier turrets from Butlers Printed Models (BPM). These are not the highest quality prints, with a bit of printing evidence visible on them at close range (they don't use resin printers, but FDM). At a distance though, they don't look too bad. 

Size wise, the BPM turrets are a good match, and look 'right' on the Zvezda hull. The BPM turret does come with a 'Battlefront' style turret peg (about .5 of an inch wide), which I removed with a modelling saw. As the FDM style of printing them leaves these hollow, it was easy enough to roughly add a magnet. 

Unfortunately, my haste and lack of thought in building the first hull led me to having to cut a hole in the bottom of the Zvezda turret for the magnet, and attach it in place using a length of sprue glued to the inside bottom of the turret. The hull magnet is on the outside of the hull, rather than the sensible approach of being inside the hull. The 2nd version I build will have the magnet inside the hull and turret. 

The Zvezda kits cost me about £5.25 each, while I paid £4 each for the turrets (when postage was included, which doubled the cost from the £2 price). I suspect a larger order from BPM would have made this more worthwhile. 

Missing Zimmerit on these models is a consideration, given that the early hulls would have had it from the factory, and I am tempted to try and add some myself. However, this might be a step too far modelling wise at 15mm, and remains a distant idea.