15mm Humvee, A Review

A pic from Irishserb's Miniatures

I am cheap. Well, my tastes tend towards the expensive, but my wallet dictates otherwise. So, when it came time to acquiring two 15mm Humvees for my All Things Zombie, Final Fade Out campaign, with my sons, I looked for economy and quality, in that order.

While there are a number of manufacturers of 15mm vehicles, most that I have found are overseas, and shipping costs would be dear. Thus, I turned my eye to domestic manufacturers and, almost by accident, ran into Irishserb's Miniatures.

Little did I know, but a fellow blogger, Fran Fran the Irish Man, aka The Angry Lurker, posted his own comments about some of IsM's wares a year ago, but I did not discover this fact until about 3 minutes ago.

I ordered two Humvees, just over a week ago, one with a M240 turret and the other with an M2 turret. The owner, contacted me and stated that the total would be $12, including shipping. Let me tell you, I was already excited by the $5 each cost, but $2 shipping, that's a deal!

I received the items in the mail, yesterday, as you can see here
Each Humvee came, complete, in its own baggy. The third baggy had the parts for the M2 turret and two extra wheels. This meant I got an additional M240 turret as part of the deal, not bad service at all!

I examined the models, looking for the typical resin cast issues. The next pics give an idea of the detail, although the picture quality is not stellar.
In this last pic, see the wheel-wells? There is a little ledge at the base of the vehicle hull, this helps to position the wheel properly as seen here

The quality of the vehicles is very good. Apart from one pin hole on one model, which is so small as to almost go unnoticed, and from one of the vehicles having a slight miscast portion at the driver side headlight (which can be dealt with during painting), the overall quality and detail is more than acceptable for 15mm.

Here are the two fully assembled models

Because of the way the hull is constructed, the wheels were not difficult to position properly. I have no problems with the vehicle teetering at all, but you do want to make sure you line up the wheel from the front and rear of the vehicle, so it does not rub against the hull (it would look odd).

The only mildly serious quibbles I would make are:

1) the turrets can be a bit fiddly to assemble as the base of the weapon has little surface area, and the positioning on the turret means the weapon is essentially hanging out on its own, with no additional support from the structure.

It is possible I put it together incorrectly, as I could only go by the photos on the site as the models came sans instructions.

2) The small pieces of the weapons and turrets are going to be hard not to break. While nicely detailed, I would not bring this to a club game, let alone a convention, and I will be very particular even when using them at the kitchen table.

My preference for these pieces would be to have them cast in metal, so that snapping the barrels would be less of a likelihood. I can take some bending, but snapping is right out.

I highly recommend these products from Irishserb. If ever I need more modern vehicles, I will go to him first, and only go elsewhere if he doesn't make what I need.

Once I get these painted, I will post pics here.

Otherwise, color me pleased!