The J2M series of aircraft were designed by Dr. Jiro Horikoshi who also was responsible for the Zero / Zeke design. The J2M (Allied code name “Jack”) was designed in 1939 and first flown in March of 1942. A total of 621 J2M Raiden (Japanese for Thunderbolt) series of aircraft J2M1 through J2M6 were produced with the M2 and M3 accounting for 438 of the total built.

I am a big fan of Osprey books and I have quite a few in my collection and find they usually provide all the information needed to research a model. This book by Ross Cowan is no exception, and it is a follow-up book to his work Roman Legionary, 58 BC – AD69, which was published in 2003 by Osprey.

The Roman Legionary in the prime of the Empire was a fine tuned fighting machine. Kept in shape by constant labor, such as building forts and roads, their universal training meant that Legions from opposite ends of the empire could fight alongside each other seamlessly. Each man knew his place and function in the battle lines.

This is not to mean that the Romans were unbeatable. There are several cases of Legions (Approximately 5000 men at full strength) being destroyed or vanishing during our time period. Also, with rebellious leaders trying to seize control of the Empire, it was not uncommon for Legion to face Legion in battle.

For me and all other Star Trek fans/modellers, it has really been great to watch Round2 pull out the old AMT Star Trek kit molds, re-work a few things and then re-release the oldies, in new form, and on top of that release super new kits in the same genre and in comparable scales. In the first quarter of 2013, among several other great releases, Round2/AMT re-packaged the original series (TOS) USS Enterprise with her two primary adversaries, the Klingon D-7 Battle Cruiser and the Romulan Bird-of-Pray (BoP) as the newest entry into their familiar 1/2500 scale, Cadet Series.

I want to start by thanking Round2 Models for providing this kit for review and IPMS USA for giving me the opportunity to review it.