Introduction

Histoire and Collections publishers through their Steel Masters imprint have recently released #13 in their special series “Steel Masters Thematiques”. This issue delves into Special Forces vehicles from around the world since 1941.

For those of you not familiar with the magazine; is there anyone who has not yet seen one of these, anyone, anyone? The magazine is printed on very nice slick paper with a good mixture of photos, large and small, black and white and color, finished model and in progress shots, and all very clear, and of the highest quality available. The text is completely in French, but if a picture is worth a thousand words the translation should be fairly easy to follow along with.

Contents

This particular issue starts with a lengthy article detailing the North African history of the Long Range Desert Group “The LRDG, Master of the Desert”. This article contains quite a few profiles of different LRDG vehicles in different color schemes, a nice addition if you are planning an eye catching model of your own. This is followed with a very nice build article using the recent Tamiya kit with the 20mm Breda cannon and a crew from New World Miniatures by Rodolphe Morieux.

The issue has a nice mix between World War II era vehicles and models and more modern subjects. Among the modern subjects are a Jackal, a VM90, and a Tatra truck that are all set in the sandbox of Iraq or in Afghanistan. Each is well done and provides plenty of in progress shots of both the vehicles and related figures as well as the dioramas progress. Unfortunately, none of the models featured are available in anything other than resin thus far, but perhaps soon we’ll start to see some major players begin to release some of these in somewhat more affordable plastic versions.

A couple of models from the era of the 60s and 70s from Oman and the Rhodesian bush country, a Land Rover and a Kudu respectively, are also included with the same level of quality in both photography and model building. Finally, the magazine is rounded out with a report on a French model show in Rinxent.

Conclusion

Another solid offering from Histoire and Collections to help get the modeling juices flowing. Again, an English translation would be nice but the quality of photography goes a long way toward ameliorating that concern.