MiniArt has continued adding to their impressive array of buildings and accessories with the diorama builder in mind. Their latest offering takes them to the North African / Mediterranean theatre with the “North African House”. At 130 parts, this kit comes in a large box with multiple sheets of vacuformed parts and 3 sprues of injection molded detail parts (most of which will end up in the spares box as extras. My sample kits had a “bonus figure” set which unfortunately were not applicable for the building setting (although I am sure that the German “Stalingrad ’42” figures wished they were in North Africa during the Russian winter). Make no mistake; this is a substantial kit that makes up into a large building.

The key to the end of World War II in Europe was the capture of Berlin, the heart of the Third Reich. The American, British and French forces were west of Berlin, but due to American influence had no designs on seizing the city. However, the Red Army was obsessed with capturing Berlin and pushed toward the city with all the speed it could muster The subject of this book is Berlin in 1945 before, during, and after its fall.

Eduard is right on par with this Photo Etch Set for Tamiya’s Mk. IX Spitfire. The Tamiya kit is just about the best Spitfire kit out there in any scale and they have already done a superb job with the cockpit. So how does Eduard come back with a product that adds a little more detail to this well thought out cockpit? They’ve done it buy adding just a little extra to Tamiya’s parts by pushing up the detail a few notches. The instrument panel is as superb as always and is done in the usual Eduard manor. But parts, such as the gun sight mounting bracket, are exchanged for Eduard’s more realistic holding bracket. This detail adds a realistic subtleness that wouldn’t be noticed until both parts are compared. The throttle boxes are made more realistic just by the fact that less is more. Instead of a clump of plastic formed to have the general outline, it’s made to look like the throttles can actually be moved back and forth.