introduction

Decalomaniacs is really one maniac: Georg Eyerman. Georg loves the oddball and obscure, and has found a niche as a decal manufacturer providing markings for tanks and other AFVs that are either obscure (FT-17s from different armies around the world, including Brazil, China and the US), or else insufficient ("Char B1's of the 3rd DCR" for those of us who love the Tamiya kit). When Georg sees a hole in the decal offerings, he often steps in, as in the case of the A7V from Meng.

Meng has brought out a number of WWI tanks, including the A7V with Krupp armor. The kit has received overall positive reviews, but one complaint all around is that it comes with markings for only a single tank: Schnuck, whose 5.7-cm Maxim-Nordenfelt gun resides in the Imperial War Museum in Manchester, UK. Decalomaniacs has stepped into this void with a set that includes four vehicles (#540-543) and a variant for two of them.

the review

In the usual Decalomaniacs Ziploc baggie is a small square of decals and a set of placement instructions for six different options.The decals are produced on a continuous sheet of decal film, so it's important to cut out the marking as close to the decal as possible in order to avoid silvering or excess transfer film. Some modelers will be concerned that the decals themselves are less-robust in color than those from commercial manufacturers like Cartograf. This is due to their production on a laser printer and not a large commercial press.

However, once the decals are applied to the kit and weathered, they will look excellent, and will give the builder options unavailable with the kit alone.

Those options are four vehicles with six total variants:

#540: Heiland ("savior")
#541: (Unnamed) with two different death's head flags
#542: Elfriede
#543: Hagen/Adalbert (there is some dispute about the name used)

Various sources offer differing nicknames for differing chassis, but modelers should have more options with Decalomaniacs' set. Why these vehicles? According to Eyerman, the Krupp-produced A7Vs have different armor that had to be split in order to apply it to the vehicle. So he limited his set to the tanks that conform to the Meng kit.

conclusion

The explosion of vehicles, guns, planes, ships and other models based on the Great War is a revelation to the hobby, and it's vital to see after market companies like Decalomaniacs supplementing the kit manufacturers like this. If you are thinking of building an A7V, then this set is well worth getting, especially at its very reasonable price of $10.

Thanks to Decalomaniacs for providing this review sample. Be sure to mention you saw it reviewed on Armorama when ordering your own.