I have previously reviewed a few other ICM kits, and I would say that this one was perhaps the hardest kit I have attempted from them. Let me first say that this kit has the extremely high quality and detail that I have come to expect from ICM. The reason I say this was the hardest for me would have to be the scale of the kit. This is a very nice and well detailed ship in 1:700 scale, which is quite common for ship models. This is the first 1:700 scale ship I have built. The scale itself is not bad at all. The part I have extreme difficulty with is the small details ICM produced for this scale. This was far more detailed than I expected for this scale (more detail than a 1:350 ship I had built previously), and some of those details were just too small for me to manipulate and fit as they are supposed to. Therefore, my completed example had some “strategic omissions” as I gave up on trying to put some items in place.

The kit came with 4 identical kits of the Konig-class WWI Battleships. I had to combine the sprues from all 4 kits to make the one “mostly complete” kit that I constructed for this review. Again, I say this, not as a mark against ICM, but as an honest critique of my skills and abilities at this time. I love how this kit turned out, overall. It is not a kit that I personally will be entering in any of the model contests that I frequent, but it looks great in my personal collection.

I hand brushed the entire kit with the included paint set that was in the kit (a fantastic surprise that I was unaware was coming with the kit), and it looks great! All the colors of the kit looked outstanding together.

As I have come to expect with ICM kits, the quality is out of this world. ICM has become my all-around favorite brand, due to the excellence of their kits. I rarely find any flash on the parts, so my time is spent creating, not cleaning. Everything fits as it should. The very few exceptions were easily remedied, such as holes I had to drill a little bit larger to fit the associated parts. The only “complaint” I had was that in this scale and with the very high level of detail, some of the parts were so tiny that I found it hard to remove them from the sprue without causing damage. This is why I used sprues from all four ships to make one complete model. I ended up damaging some of the small parts when removing them, some fired off into oblivion when they slipped the grip of my tweezers, and some became victims to the bottomless “carpet monster”.

If you are like me, big hands that shake a little more than I care to admit at times, this kit may be a little taxing for your patience and your own abilities. I would probably avoid further attempts at a ship in this scale. I would, however, recommend this kit to anyone who thinks that they would be up to the challenge. Even with my difficulties, it turned out to be a wonderful addition to my display, and a great addition to my experience of modeling challenges. I personally did not put the various lifeboats on my kit as I thought it made it look a bit cluttered and hid a lot of the details of the deck that I liked so much.

Once again, ICM has come up with a wonderful product, and even though I wasn’t up to the ultimate challenge of it, I do not regret my time spent on it. One final confession, no, I did not even attempt to do rigging on this one. I am happy with what I was able to accomplish and did not want to mess it up. I found this kit to be very fragile! Be careful when building, displaying, competing, or cleaning!

I highly recommend this kit and thank the folks from ICM for providing it and to IPMS-USA for allowing me to conduct this review.