Doing a somewhat more recent build this week for #ThrowbackThursday, I decided to revisit this tank from Piececool, which has an absolutely awful name to try to ever remember (M1-A2 Sep Tusk II? Why not throw in a greek letter?). But it’s a beautiful build. It is a somewhat large build, but not as huge as you might think… I’ll go ahead and include the second Instagram post that shows comparisons next to Metal Earth tanks. Oh, and this post actually had a video!

Anyways, on to the pictures (which appear to indicate that I was rather infatuated with Instagram’s Layout app when I posted this build) and the post caption…


#Piececool build № 14: the M1-A2 Sep Tusk II model. Which, as it turns out, is not a fictional tank like I thought it was (what with the excessive armaments and armor plating, and the Piececool tramp stamp). It turns out this is a variant of the M1 Abrams.

Putting aside my embarrassing ignorance of the subject matter, this is a great build. It’s my first of the Piececool tanks (I was honestly a little put off by the large branding they emblazon on their tanks, why not put it on the bottom?), and I really enjoyed it. While it is only two sheets, it’s still a LOT of pieces. I think this took me somewhere in the neighborhood of 8-10 hours to build.

The design is fairly solid and doesn’t present any major build problems (not that it’s easy, it is quite intricate). The only possible hangup is the curved armor plating on the sides. The amount of curvature is complete guesswork, and when you are dealing with the stacked segments, you have to be careful to curve both pieces the same amount so the individual plates line up to each other between the two pieces.

The first time I saw this model, I was both attracted to and repulsed by it. I felt like the gold was gaudy, and they had just stuck on way too many greeblies (I was thinking it was made up, remember?). Turns out that when you actually see it in person, it’s not as overwhelming, and the gold actually serves to help differentiate the various components of the tank quite well.

I’m glad I decided to take the plunge on this model, and I love the results, as well as the additional detail in a tank of this scale. I’ll follow this post up later with a comparison of this model and the #MetalEarth M1 Abrams tank.

Can’t sleep. So what do I do? Edit the comparison photos and type up the description at an unholy hour of the night!

So here ya go: a comparison between the #Piececool M1-A2 Sep Tusk II and the #MetalEarth M1 Abrams. It’s really quite surprising how the Piececool model is not that much bigger.

Oh, and for an addendum to my last post, I forgot to mention that there was one big surprise on the Piececool model: the barrel is NOT preformed like they are in the Metal Earth tank models. It consists of three cylinder parts you have to form (joined by two circular pieces). It’s a labor of love to round those cylinders, lemme tell ya.

Oh, and for a bonus, I’ve decided to include a couple of photos of all my (completed) tanks together (even the truly fictional one).