Nice to see this in the main stream, rather than the overpriced offering by Pfatz. We hear so much about the late War German tanks, interestingly if you listen to David Fletcher or David Wiley of the Tank Museum, they agree that although technically superb in certain aspects, the Tigers and Panthers were riddled with faults, unreliabilities and as weapons of war were both disastrous to build and practically useless on the battlefield. The Centurion however was superbly engineered and built, and so good that it served with numerous armies around the world from 1945 through to the 2000s. So nice to see the first version made readily available rather than another fantasy Nazi design.

While I largely agree with you on most of what you say in regards to the Centurions I have my reservations about Tigers being "practically useless on the battlefield" as this flies in the face of evidence shown time and again of a small handful of these and related tanks single-handedly routing many times their numbers in enemy tanks, especially on the Eastern Front where entire Soviet mechanized groups would steer clear of regions known to have Tigers. To say nothing of their unequaled kill records. True, they did suffer from numerous flaws but wartime requirements for numbers prevented any quick solutions to those problems. These tanks did not become famous and rightfully feared because they were lousy tanks, or that they were large and intimidating, it was that, when used properly, they performed a force multiplier function far in excess of their admittedly small numbers. The same with the late Panther G series. Never enough of them to go around -fortunately for the Allied tankers who opposed them.

This thing looks awesome, I'm going to have to learn more about this. I have always loved the idea of having a .50cal or even 20mm gun mounted coaxially on a tank beside the main gun. I quickly learned why this was less practical than a .30 cal coax but I think it's great that they played around with this idea. I thought this Mk.1 Centurion had a .50 there next to the gun but from the little I've read on wiki, it appears some were equipped with the 20mm Polsten gun. Wow! Perhaps that s what were seeing here, I don't know, someone more familiar with them can chime in. Thanks!

It is indeed the Polsten gun. / Robin

Great to see the early version of the Centurion in an AFV Club box, it would be great if they could now see their way to going to the other end of its lifespan by doing a Gulf War era Centurion AVRE too.