Those debris sets look great. Perfect for a modern day diorama.

I like the debris sets but 12.16 EUR for the broken wood set - not for me. I know some modelers don't have the time or skills to make these pieces but €2.95 will get me a large Americano and enough wooden coffee stirrers as my concience will allow me to take from Starbucks To each his own though.

And the Tilly decals arent exactly 'new', simply taken from AA's earlier full kit release of the Tilly, just check the date the decal sheet in the pic! The Chieftan barrel is indeed an odd one as well. I assume its just taken from one of their extensive conversion and aimed at those wishing to improve small parts, without spending a fortune on a massive conversion. The debris items I do like though, particulaly the discarded drinks bottles!

Yup, and it looks almost the same as the Hillman Tilly decals. Still a great set though! For the debris: I like the trash and the tires most. Don't see any necessity for the wooden stuff - as Pat said, easy to do yourself. Cheers! Stefan

Pat, do you have a particular technique you apply? I started this last summer and found that carelessly wrapping them round serviettes allays suspicion Perhaps a Feature is in order - favorite methods, how to distract waiters etc...? I reckon this year, with SWMBO's help, I can get enough to build a Russian village...

Hardly. It builds into a pretty nice Mk.3 out of the box. Which it is, not a Mk.5 as shown on the box. The 120 barrel is pretty good for a Mk.3. If you want to do later Mk.s yes it takes some work and you need the later barrel from AA or just use one from the Challengr I. It's only been out about 12 years now.

True - it's easy to be dismissive of the Tamiya Chieftain simply because it's mislabeled, although it is a fairly old kit. I guess maybe the recent Friul tracks have raised the interest level in the kit, prompting the barrel as a "gap filler" for anybody who wants to do a decent Mk.3 My own Chieftain's getting the Friul tracks plus the full AA Mk 11 w "Stillbrew" & "TOGS" treatment. The AA upper hull came with horrific warp, but seems to have been beaten into submission through large-scale use of the heat gun. Wish I had a bit of free cash, their Marksman conversion looks tempting.. It'd be nice to see AA cover the Chieftain-Cheviot/Challenger "gap" a bit, maybe with a Shir 1 and 2, or a Jordanian Khalid. I assume there're also possibilities for the post-UK Challengers operated as the Al-Hussein by Jordan, too.

I've just had an e-mail from Derek Hansen at AA which should clear this up: have cleared up one issue that arose, the Chieftain barrel is included as standard with our update sets, we don't really want to get into updating updates territory! I have clarified that point in all the product descriptions. Hope this helps!

Sorry if this is obvious somewhere, but does anyone know if AA sells their stuff in the US, through any other distributors. I would like to get a Chieftain barrel, but the shipping cost from the UK is more than the barrel itself! Thanks for any leads. I have checked my 2 normal online sites, Sprue Bros and Squadron, but no joy. Thanks.