don't get me wrong, I like DML, and I think their models are great. but it seems that lately all they come out with are variants. i'm all for having more and more armor models, and I like to build the different types (early, mid, ausf b etc.), but come on! so they have another mid-late ausf what-ever type of tank. that not really exciting. when they do put something new out, they do a pretty good job with it. so yeah, they may have more releases than others, but when it's just diffrent types of the same thing, it hardly counts...

Have to agree with that. - Steve

"We have met the enemy and he is us." Matan, you're right, of course, but consider the alternative: In the bad old days, Tamiya chose a variant, put it out as THE KIT, and the AM folks came up with resin conversions so you could have an Ausfuehrung Q or the Bustle Turret with Popcorn Maker for your Sherman. The Tamiya kit was $40-$50 (in today's money) and the AM solutions (which sometimes didn't fit very well and required a ton of work) cost 2x that. Now, DML puts out every variant in the alphabet, as well as mid-late-in-the-middle, not quite this but definitely not that one and we &%$#@ as well, LOL. New the kits are $40-$50, but usually quite a bit less if you shop around or wait 6-18 months. But guess what? You don't have to hunt up some nerd in Hobbitland who's making his AM conversions part-time, doesn't have a working phone, or ships every blue moon. Gents, I don't know about you, but DML seems to have found a need in the hobby and is making money from it. If they weren't, they wouldn't be issuing so many variants. While it's cheaper to reuse the tooling over a series of kits, there are still new sprues, graphics and the cost of production to amortize. And I suspect that plenty of modelers are only to happy to have the variants OOB and not have to do any conversions. And herewith endeth my sermon for today, LOL!

Bill , Nicely put Don

Thanks, Don. As my mother used to say, "if it's out of your price range, don't buy it!"

First off this is Dragons first Mid. Production Tiger. Second, what company doesn't maximize their molds? Do you think Bronco is going to stop with the Diana? Hell no, they're going to do the FlaK versions, another PaK version and then the regular version. Will anybody bit_h about that? I doubt it. I won't. How many KVs did Trumpeter do? By the way, they're doing more. No bit_hin from me. Do you think Tamiya is going to stop with their current BT-7. Doubt it. Who cares if Dragon does another Tiger I. Again I bet you it sells out very quickly. And yes Alex it is unique in that it is a very specific vehicle "Command version January 44 production" Problably have only marking for 1 or 2 specific vehicles (and a generic sheet probably). Roy

Markings are for 5 tanks in 3 units: s.Pz.Abt.503, Panzer Regiment Bäke s.Pz.Abt.508 s.Pz.Abt.507 There are no further generic markings because we could find no photographs of any further tanks that matched the kit. David

Wow thats a few more than I thought there would be comeing from such a vehicle (specific production batch). There are actually photographs of 5 different command tanks from this production run? How many were built? Roy

It seems that Command Tigers were built in small batches. We don't know how many were in this batch. Probably no more than 8. These are the 5 vehicles that we found: More photos are at TIIF.DE but go to the original sources for full-size pics. David