Zvezda 2016 Catalog

[MikeRC97]

Link to Zvezda 2016 catalog (in Russian) was posted on TMP yesterday:

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=407178

No new 1/72 figure sets. Not a surprise, but still very sad. In fact there appears to be very little new other than 1/100 AFVs. I guess they are doing well with Flames of War gamers.

[MABO]

Thanks for posting this link!

[Erich von Manstein]

Well, there will be at least a few fresh 1/72 Zvezda kits in 2016.

1/72 AoT Figures:
6132 - WWII Soviet Staff
6133 - WWII German Staff
6174 - WWII British Staff
All of them are backlogs from earlier catalogues.
I still live in hope that Zvezda & Italeri both will return to 1/72 production in the not too distant future!

1/72 AFV kits ("snap fit", easy assembling style):
5023 - Tiger II
5039 - T-34/85 (already released!)
5044 - SU-100
5046 - BMPT "Terminator"
Note that although all Zvezda 1/72 afv-kits are labelled as "snap fit" & obviously are targeting the wargaming crowd, they compare very favourably with similar products from other "quick build" manufacturers such as Armourfast or PSC which in general are oversimplified & crude imho. The Zvezda ones are easy to assemble but with proper looking tracks, all in all very detailed & correctly dimensioned.

[T. Dürrschmidt]

At least an honest Zvezda catalouge without pictures of sets which will never appear . So this is still a bit sad, but better than looking forward to announced sets that won´t make it to the figure market.

[MikeRC97]

@Erich: actually 6132 and 6133 are existing sprues that were exclusive to the orignal AoT boardgame (I have had those sprues for years). Literally all Zvezda had to do was design a box for each set and yet they still did not ship last year as scheduled. I think that is an indication of how low a priority 1/72 figures are for Zvezda right now.

Really I should say how low a priority 1/72 figures are right now for almost all manufacturers. Over on the miniatures page forum someone recently posted a question about Pegasus Hobbies releasing new figure sets. There was a reply from Mike "Bunkermeister" Creek - he has a blog which has previewed Pegasus figures in the past so he has access to the owners of Pegasus. Here is what he wrote:
"They have some vehicles and space
ships in the pipeline. They want to do
more figures but the market is slow
right now."

This echos what Zvezda staff have posted on their official Russian language forum and was repeated by English speaking board members here and on other miniature forums.

Even Hat, which has been so prolific over the past decade, is barely releasing new figures anymore. Caesar Miniatures seems content just to release WWII German figure sets.

Mars and Stetlets continue to release sets but sadly their figures are just not to my taste.

So I think it is fair to say we are facing a slow down in new sets that may last for years. I can only hope that at some point the market improves to the point where we see sets that were announced but never released and new sets coming out.

In the meantime I have hundreds of nappie figures waiting to be painted so I should look at this slow down as something of a mixed blessing!