The plastic is a dark grey and fairly soft. Fit is reasonable though all the joining surfaces for the body panels will need some sanding to get a better join. Even with that I found there were the odd places where I had to apply some filler and sand. This must be done very carefully so as to not remove too many rivets.

The kit was basically built straight from the box, with a few minor modifications to make it a bit more accurate. The Landships web site provides a some good info on the A7V and was quite helpful in identifying the changes. I was also able to get my hands on a copy of the excellent book, “The German A7V Tank and the captured British Mark IV tanks of World War 1” by Maxwell Hundleby & Rainer Strasheim, published by Haynes Publications in 1990. This book is a must read for anyone who has an interest in the A7V and captured British Mk. IV tanks used by the Germans, and even more valuable for the wealth of pictures and history on the A7V and its kin.

From my references I found that the early A7Vs did not have exhaust pipes nor the foot steps beneath the doors, so the exhaust pipes (parts 10 & 18) were not mounted and were tossed into the spare parts box, while the molded on foot steps were shaved from the body’s side panels.

My kit had a prominent seam on one of the track units that I tried to remove as best as I could without creating a flat spot along its length. The rear faces of the bogie units (parts 8 & 9) are molded hollow. I covered these over with some plastic sheet and built up the assembly to resemble the front side of the bogies. I didn’t put too much detail on these as they are mostly out of sight when the tank sits on the ground. The teeth molded on the front idler wheels were removed. I also added axles from some plastic rod between the drive sprockets on the bogies and the transfer case at the rear of the body pan (part 7).

The barrel for the forward gun (part 13) was drilled out. Take care while assembling the front gun mount as shown in Steps 1 and 2. The instructions direct the builder to put the mount in backwards. I didn’t notice this until I had glued it in place. Then I had to cut it out of the hole in the body and put it in the proper way.

The machine guns are molded so as to be moveable. Since I had no desire to have moveable guns, all of the machine gun mounts (part 17) were glued in place to the body panels to ensure there was no chance they would fall into the body when I added the guns later. To ease construction I cut excess plastic from the small balls located on the rear of the machine guns so I could slide them into place in the gun mounts and glue them after all the painting was complete.

Replacement door handles were fashioned from some thin wire.

Decals are not the best but are usable. The white on the images is a dirty off-white and not a nice pure white, plus the vehicle names are bit too large compared to what is shown in the A7V photographs I found. The decals did snug down well after a few applications of Microsol.

Markings are provided for 4 tanks (note that the comments inside the square brackets are annotations that I have added from info found in the Hundleby & Strasheim book) :

1. A7V #506, Mephisto in early markings, skull and crossbones markings [Mar. 21, 1918]
2. A7V #506, Mephisto in later markings, name and Red Devil emblem [Apr. 24, 1918]
3. A7V #502 [Mar. 21, 1918]
4. A7V #505 Baden I, early markings [probable markings]
5. A7V #507 Cyclop, early markings

For markings I went a different route than suggested in the instructions. The Hundleby & Strasheim A7V book contains a couple of pictures of A7V ‘Baden I’ just after the battle of Villers-Bretonneux and Cachy in April , 1918. In one of the photographs “Baden I” displays no German Iron Cross markings of any sort, which I felt would make for something out of the ordinary, and I just had to finish the kit with these markings.