Bolt Action Universal Carrier Wasp Mk II

Along with the previous introduced Chindits, there is need for suiting vehicular support. In Burma they used the nimble bren carriers to transport soldiers and goods, some of the universal carriers were fitted with a flamethrower and called Wasp, which I want to introduce in this review.

Of the more than 110,000 units that were build of the universal carrier, roughly 1,000 units were manufactured as the wasp. The wasp carried the Ronson flamethrower system, with the Mark I having it fixed in the front and the Mk II the projector on the co-driver's position. Both had two fuel tanks with a capacity of 100 gallons. The canadians developed the Mk IIC with a single 75 gallon fuel tank. As you can see from the product image, this is the Mark II of the wasp.

The wasp comes as a resin and pewter kit, with chassis and tracks made from resin and the heads of the crew casted in pewter. It is not using the universal carrier plastic kit. Warlord Games offers this 28mm / 1:56 scale kit only as made-to-order for 15 GBP. There is no instruction with this kit and it comes in a bubblewrap bag, containing the three pieces of resin and a short strip of pewter for the heads.

I did a dry-fit before assembly, to see if any parts were warped. As you have to prepare resin with a luke warm soap wash, to get rid of any detergent, that is a good time to align any warped pieces to the hull of the vehicle. Cast was pretty clean, no flash and no need for alignment. I had no problems with air bubbles in mine, only a few rivets that weren't casted as clean as they could, but I'll fix those up with some mud, so they will not bother me on the final kit.

Assembly is easy, just glue the tracks and add the heads to the sockets on the crew. Yes, they could have added a bit more detail to the driver's cab by making the whole upper torso an individual piece instead of just the heads, but this way they made use of the seperate-head-system of many Warlord miniatures.

This seperate heads give us the opportunity for the next step rather easily. The wasp will be used with the chindit force that I introduced earlier this week, so I just had to swap those helmeted heads with some bearded slouch hat heads and they fit right it.

Here is a comparison to the regular universal carrier plastic kit. Details are on eye level, just the lower back part of the resin kit lacked a bit of detailing, for that reason I added two bags to cover it up.

And to sum it up, the wasp from different angles with the added chindit slouch hat heads.

Conclusion
The wasp is a lovely little kit. Pricing is a bit difficult, it is on the same level as the jeep and just a GBP more than the plastic kit, but still 15 GBP feels a bit much for something as small as this vehicle. But it is something exotic and as some forces like the Chindits will not field many vehicles anyway, the price won't hurt you as bad as a jeep platoon or two for your Airborne / Paratrooper armies.

Bolt Action wise this kit will add between 80 to 120 points to your army, nimble and fast, but fragile.

Beyond that, there is not much to say, it is a three piece kit, so not much of a hassle there.

Bolt Action is a brand of Warlord Games.