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SprueStack

Guides, kit history and WW2 day by day for wargamers and modellers

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Painted 28mm WW2 miniatures, a sidecar team and a camouflaged Jagdpanther tank destroyer, on a grass gaming table.
Painted 28mm WW2 Bolt Action miniatures mid-game on a club table. Someone else's models, not ours. Photo: 43MZrinyiII, CC0
Build types
5
Build stages
7
Build guides
4
Archive entries
13

Build Types

Pick your build

All build types →

Techniques

The build, stage by stage

All techniques →
  1. 01 Plan and sort
  2. 02 Prep
  3. 03 Build
  4. 04 Finish
  5. 05 Weather and detail
  6. 06 Base and display
  7. 07 Care, mod and rebuild

Start here

Three ways in

First plastic kit

A small single-sprue kit to learn gluing, seams and paint.

Start here ↗

First painted mini

A handful of single-pose figures to learn assembly and a simple scheme.

Start here ↗

First big brick set

A step-by-step build to learn sorting, bags and instructions.

Start here ↗
A moulded plastic model kit sprue, flash and all.
A moulded plastic kit sprue, fresh from the box: the subject of the Build and Finish stages. Not a specific kit. Photo: Bill Abbott, CC BY-SA 2.0

Featured technique · Finish

Finish is where a build stops looking like parts and starts looking like a model: paint, decals, stickers and the last details.

Read the Finish stage ↗

Kit Archive

Which set, and why

All 13 kits →
  • Reference: an M4 Sherman at The Tank Museum, Bovington. Not the kit.
    Tamiya

    Tamiya M4 Sherman, Early Production

    A 1995 rebox of an older Tamiya Sherman hull with new early-production parts. Published reviews describe it as a simple, well-fitting build, though it is closer to a mid-production tank than its name suggests.

    1:35 · beginner Researched profile Photo: Roland Turner, CC BY-SA 2.0
  • Reference: painted 28mm Bolt Action WW2 miniatures and a tank destroyer on a gaming table. Not this specific set.
    Warlord Games

    Warlord Games Bolt Action Starter Set: Band of Brothers (Third Edition)

    The D-Day themed Bolt Action Third Edition starter: 12 US Airborne and 12 German Grenadiers in 28mm hard plastic, two 1/56 half-tracks, a ruined farmhouse, mat, dice and the A5 rulebook.

    28mm · beginner Researched profile Photo: 43MZrinyiII, CC0
  • Reference: a Supermarine Spitfire Mk Va, the closest cleanly-licensed photo found. Not the Mk Ia this kit depicts.
    Airfix

    Airfix Supermarine Spitfire Mk.Ia (A01071C)

    Airfix's 1:72 Spitfire Mk.Ia: 36 parts, skill level 1, one marking scheme, 127 mm long with a 155 mm wingspan.

    1:72 · beginner Researched profile Photo: NASA, Public domain
  • Rubicon Models

    Rubicon Models M4A4 Sherman / Firefly VC (280088), 1:56

    A 105-part, four-sprue 1:56 (28mm wargames scale) plastic kit that builds an M4A4 Sherman or a Firefly VC, with crew figures and open or closed hatches.

    1:56 · beginner Researched profile

Tools and Bench

A few tools to know

All tools →

Side cutters

Small cutters with flat-ground blades on one side, used to clip parts away from a plastic sprue cleanly, with less stress on the part than scissors or a knife.

Brick separator

A small moulded tool used to prise apart two tightly stuck brick plates, without the slipping risk of a knife or screwdriver.

Wet palette

A palette with a damp sponge and a thin membrane under the paint, keeping acrylic paint workable for far longer during a painting session than a dry palette.

Contexts

Where a build is set

One context among many on this site: Normandy 1944, covered through the Kit Archive and an illustrated campaign map.

Normandy 1944

Normandy, northern France

The first campaign map on SprueStack. The coastline is redrawn from public-domain Natural Earth data for orientation; it is an illustrated map, not for navigation. The place names are real; unit detail and linked build guides for each marker are still being added.

Open the map ↗