Designed to be used with the Revell M 60, the kit includes a whole new turret top that fits onto the Revell turret base. The turret is beautifully cast with no air bubbles or blemishes to be seen. The mortar is moulded in place as are all the "Blazer" packs, certainly a lot more detailed than the old Esci kit, with the correct number of Blazer packs on the turret sides. The turret lifting rings are cast in place and are hollow, this is really casting at its best.

The set also includes the Aluminium Wheels instead of the steel wheels supplied in the Revell kit, although it would not be out of place to see the Magach with steel wheels or even a mixture of both also there are a new set of sprockets for the new tracks. A new barrel is included with a thermal jacket as are of course all the hull Blazer packs. A wealth of accessories are included in the set, including jerry cans, packs, the obligatory stretcher, 4 FN Mags, the smoke discharger containers, a twin .50 cal HMG mounting for over the main gun with cut down jerry cans as ammo containers, in a nice touch Goffy have included 3 crew helmets a folded flak jacket and an RPG, although the RPG is not relevant to the kit and would very rarely be found on a tank! it is welcome.

The tracks are simply the longest run of the Revell Merkava 3 tracks in Resin, for those that don't like playing with resin tracks (me included) can use a set from the merkava kit. On a personal note, I find the Esci Merkava tracks better in shape than the Revell ones, if only they had the guide horns on !

The instruction sheet is an A4 sheet with a picture of the parts numbered, the actual placement are two pictures of a built model with arrows showing where the bits go,

Overall I am impressed with this set, it is all nicely cast without blemishes, I have only three minor critisisms overall and these are purely personal, my first is the FN Mags butts, these seem a little short (like the Revell Merkava Mags) after lugging a GPMG (British version of the FN Mag) around for 12 years it just doesn't look right. My second is the tracks, I have never felt that the Revell tracks captured the shape of the Merkava tracks and that the Esci (with the exception of the guide horns) were better. My third is to do with the turret basket, with this set you have to use the kit basket on the rear, this is all well and good, but a lot of pictures now show the Magach 6b with a completely different type of basket fitted, similar to the ones fitted on the Magach 7's, although I realise that this would be difficult to produce in resin, it would have been possible given the fact that the stowage basket is always full of equipment, and would have given the builder an extra option.

Overall I recommend this kit for all Israeli armour fans.

References

Jane's Armour and Artillery 1990-91 11th Edition by Christopher F Foss

Israel's Armor Might by Samuel M Katz (Concord Publications)

Battleground Lebanon by Samuel M Katz (Concord Publications)