ICM Holding has put out a new model of their ZIL-131 truck with the addition of a Ukrainian Sapper Team. This is kit 35018 and is titled “Danger Mines!” Ukraine, Summer 2022. It is essentially a combination of their Sapper Team kit and their venerable ZIL-131 truck kit.

The box art for the kit is first rate and lends itself well to the actual truck and figures that are part of the kit. The box is compact and will fit well in any stash until you decide to build it. Although the box is small, the material within the box was not smashed together and no damage was noted when breaking out the materials from the box.

An overview of the sprues once removed from their respective plastic covers reveals crisp moldings with no short fills, pin marks or flash. The decals are in their own protective bag with cover sheet. The rubber tires for the truck are nicely molded and do not have any fill marks of extra flash. The instructions for the model are well laid out, follow a logical path of progression and are not ambiguous in part placement or orientation. Sprue connections for the parts are smartly done and not placed in awkward spots on the parts. The connections are not overly large and do not lead to disfiguring the parts as they are removed from the trees.

For the construction, I followed the directions as detailed and did not have to do any workarounds to compensate for poor instructions. The directions followed a logical progression for the construction of the truck. This is not surprising as ICM has many variants of the ZIL-131 available, and they got it right once again. The truck is not a curbside kit and comes with full suspension and simplified engine under the hood. I do recommend painting the truck as you go. I did major subassemblies of the truck and then would paint them. Otherwise, I felt I would not be able to get the paint into the smaller, out of way places, even with airbrushing. I had the frame, truck bed and truck cab as my major subsections. The one modification I made was cutting the windows for both doors so that they looked as though they had been rolled down. This was easy to perform as I just followed the line for the small front triangle window. This allows for better viewing of the interior of the cab of the truck and the driver.

For paint, I used Vallejo Model Air, Russian 4BO as my base color for the truck. I airbrushed this on without first applying primer and I had no issues with paint adherence to the plastic. I then applied the decals and let them sit for a day before over-spraying the entire truck with Vallejo Acrylic Matt Varnish from a large rattle-can. The kit comes with a very large decal sheet of random digital patterns that you can apply as you see fit. The decals lay down nicely and there were no issues with silvering or conforming to the shape of the vehicle. They did not lift back off when they were sprayed with the matt varnish.

The kit comes with four figures, a dog, many mines and some other items. There are many equipment choices provided for kitting out your figures. I did end up with some extra personal gear items when all was said and done. All figures and extras are molded crisply as well. I did find that I had to add some “sprue goo” filler to the left and right leg halves for the rearend as the space between them was too large after the leg halves were joined together. This was an easy fix and did not even require sanding once applied to cover the joint. The directions provide some guidance on painting ideas for the figures, but I went to the internet and found plenty of other examples available to use as reference. Once constructed, the figures can easily stand on their own and do not need to be affixed to anything for display.

Overall, I found this kit to be a joy to build and this would lend itself to be as a stand-alone display or as part of diorama/vignette. I spent about ten hours building this little gem and highly recommend it. Thanks again to ICM Holding for providing this kit to review!