Culling the Dragon’s Stash, sounds like one of HBO’s $25 million dollar pilot failures.
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Amen brother.
Horses for courses and all that. I respect anyone who loves a Miniart challenge, but its not for me.
I tolerate and only occasionally love the build phase: I am an airbrush guy. This is the fun bit for me, the painting and weathering.
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Agreed, same page here, paint, washes & most of all drybrushing are my favorites parts of the project. I seldom enjoy the build phrase. Usually when I do it will be an older ~1970’s kit with ~10 steps and adding details. Ryefield Model’s & Tamiya kits are some what an exception and the build proves enjoyable & interesting.
When I see a double sized AFV model box, that’s so popular these days, no joy here, just dread at how long with that monster kit will take to build. How many boring hours of mindless parts cleaning will the build cost? There’s a stack of those kits in my stash…lol
Different courses as you say.
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I’m good with an airbrush but I’m a builder. I too hate the tedium of cleaning parts, but I love the build. Cutting plastic, the smell of Tamiya Extra Thin Quick Set, and making up a tangible object from a sprue makes my day.
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I tried to sell off some of my stash at a model show in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago. People do NOT want to pay a fair price for kits. I was discounting some very good DML, AFV Club and Tristar kits down to 30 dollars and people were still complaining. Needless to say, I brought a lot back home with me. I’m not giving stuff away.
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Looks like I put my AK35503 kit on ebay just in the nick of time 
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Robert, welcome to the forum & the Puma chat.
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Thanks for the warm welcome. That Miniart kit does look tempting, since I’ll only be building one.
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RFM makes sweet kits.
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Brand Loyalty as a marketing tool.
All RFM has done is produce an incomplete interior kit. That has already been done. Tossing in a set of bulged tires and an engine is not going to sell me on this one. I expected more. To say something nice . All the hatches can be open to show off the incomplete effort. Nice touch.
I will wait for Mini Art 35414 to come out. It looks to have a complete interior. The turret and engine compartment are there and complete . It even has amo bins. All the hatches open on this one as well. I can live without bulged tires.
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Hmm… I would say that the people who will buy RFM will buy it not for the interior but because they know the quality is good. RFM doesn’t usually disappoint, and some modelers want this as opposed to the thousands of parts that come with the Miniart kit. I wouldn’t say that this is a marketing tool, just that the Miniart complete interior appeals to some and the RFM appeals to others.
Yes, it has been done before, but by Dragon who is notorious for confusing instructions. Trust me on that, I built that kit. RFM is just producing a kit that will appeal to those who want an easier but still quality build, and will probably surpass Dragon’s kit ease-of-build wise.
Now, I’m not saying that the Dragon kit is bad quality, I just don’t think the ease of build and whatnot is that great. I didn’t really enjoy building it. However, that’s just MHO so take it with a grain of salt.
Also, welcome to the forum! 
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@mij6419 Welcome to the Forum! There’s many knowledgeable people and lots of excellent discussion.
That’s an interesting take on RFM because they offer exactly what I’m always looking for in a model kit. Excellent quality, good accuracy, excellent detail & fit with quality instructions in a kit with a reasonable parts count at a fair price. None of the RFM kits I’ve built disappointed so, yes that developed brand loyalty in me as a customer. Tamiya being the only other model company to ever accomplish that.
As for MiniArt kits, in general they look nice in the box every ~1,000 to ~3,500 small fiddly part of them. I purchased a few and was completely disappointed in build experience. For me due to an excessively pointless parts count of small fiddly fragile parts. I understand & respect many people like that in a kit, however I’m not one of those. I don’t mind adding +1,200 parts detailing a simpler kit on occasion but normally avoid kits offering a weak fiddly suspension building experience.
As for my stock pile of half a dozen MiniArt kits, I gave them all away as they had absolutely no value to me specifically due to their design and engineering not being what I like.
We all have our preferences and that’s part of what helps keep the hobby fun and interesting.
Both brands have their loyal customers. I think the demand for a new Puma kit is high enough both sorts of brand loyal customers can pick their ideal kit to build.
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I’m buying it because brand loyalty. I think RFM kits are the best on the market and while Dragon kits are great, for some reason their prices now can be expensive.
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What’s that expression again?
Something with punishment and glutton
Boxes with two numbered white stickers means two kits are sharing one box.
There is usually wasted space in most boxes but definitely not the T-44/54/55 boxes …
Ah!
Figured it out: Glutton for punishment.
Right, that must be me,
somehow … don’t know how it came about
that I arrived in this sorry state …
Cracking rocks and bedrock for fun on my days off,
dreaming about building Miniart kits while trying to stay sane …
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Love their line, but do not enjoy building their kits. The only one I could finish was one of their Tempo kits.
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Uncle-Heavy, I do admire your ambition! That’s a banging collection of MA’s.
There’s no question MiniArt picks killer subject matter.
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It’s only the visible parts of it …
Edit: Those two Tamiya T-55’s will get Miniart tracks and wheels so they will be hybrids, more individual parts from MA (tracks) than from Tamiya.
The upper hull and turret will be binned (or reused for something “creative”) and replaced by
PanzerShop conversions.
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I have RFM kits and I like them,
I just cannot give them a good job happy happy on their Puma. They could have done more and chose not to. The only reason I looked at it was because it was an RFM kit. I expected to see something a lot more complete and was
disappointed.
One I scratch my head on is the RFM Sherman VC Firefly. It has those multi part tracks in it. Four parts for each shoe and then the guide horns. RFM had very nice Sherman tracks before . I can’t understand why they switched to these.
Gecko put the for mentioned Sherman tracks in their Ram kits.
I guess there all the rage.
All this fiddley stuff is wasted on a on a Sherman . They have live tracks no sag on the top run.
I buy a different brands. Whoever is giving the best representation of the subject I am interested in gets my money. Presentley I am building a Revelle 1/24 Routemaster bus. I am making the seats look better.
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Another builder here…I’ve seriously been considering displaying some of my work in bare plastic, resin and photo etch. Such a shame to cover up all that fancy aftermarket stuff. Also how will anyone see all the parts I scratch built. Huge Miniart fan as well.
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