You do remember from the Mk. IV article I’ve started with the turret – and I did it with this kit, too. It’s very quick build, all you need to do is blank off the turret luggage bin, as the side facing the turret is open. I also filled what looks like angular ejector marks next to the locating holes for the fire extinguishers on it.

As the hull is directly taken from the Mk. IV kit the instructions will – again – make you glue the wrong halves for the driving sprockets and the idler wheels. To sum it up:

– glue parts 24 and 27 for the idlers,

– use parts 25 and 28 for the drivers.

The centipede assembled with no troubles, although the sprue gates on the roadwheels appear to be thicker than the Mk. IV and therefore harder to clean up. I can’t be sure about the other examples, but on mine the aft sponson wall is messing with the fit of the driving sprocket, so I cut it off. I also chiselled the towing cables and scratchbuilt a holder over each of the side hatches.

The vertical armor in front of the driver and gunner again had it inside trimmed to fit with the rest of the hull.

I could now assemble the hull without glue and paint it the base color. I mixed two dark greens – Revell 46 and 67 – with a bit or dark brown (84) to get a brownish tint, and some bright yellow (12) to lighten the base color a bit. The hull and turret were then sprayed and set aside to dry.

The tracks were basecoated with an automotive primer, sprayed MM Gun Metal, ridges highlighted with Tamiya X-11, and then washed with brown and sand colors. The track runs are long enough to completely go around the sponsons, but as they are not entirely seen I chopped off a few tracks of each run to hang as spares. Once dry I supergued them in place and closed the hull using very small amounts of Humbrol Liquid Poly – simply to avoid separation, since the fit is rather good.

I used a strip of 18 mm Tamiya tape cut to irregular shapes to create the masks for the sand pattern.

The camo was then liberally applied – turned a bit too thick in places… See you next time…