Black Lion Decals

1/72 Mk IV German beute
1/72 German Army WW1
1/72 German Freicorps 1919
 

A big problem for all modellers of WW1 Military hardware is the lack of decals: the majority of kits comes without any. So you are forced to ransack other kits, improvising and making do with what you can find. And many times you are simply forced to just leave your model without any markings at all.

That is, until now.

Due to the lack of decals I had a go myself a couple of years ago, and then I came in contact with Michael Boer. He submitted some designs that were far suprior to my own attempts, and when I was unable to continue doing my own decals, he - to the luck of all the rest of us - continued. He started his own small firm of Black Lion Decals (together with two other Dutch modellers: Jan and Antal Giesbers).

They do mainly 1/72 decals, mainly of the Great War and pre-WW2 era, but they are also doing other eras, of different hard-to-find objects. They also do custom decals, for any scale! (and they have started to do decals for model kits producers, like Retrokits).

You can visit their site by clicking here!

Here I will review three different sets, all in some way connected to the German army of the WW1 era.

The first one, Set Nr 72011, is for Mk IV Tanks captured and used by the German Army as Beute (booty) Tanks. You get full decals for SIX individual historical tanks: "Peter", "Bob", Liesl", "Bertha", "Fritz" and "Lotte". You also get a number of decals of a more generic nature, in the shape of Balkencrosses and Abteilung number circles. They are intended for the EMHAR Mk IV kit.

The second one, Set Nr 72017, is for AFV's used by the German Freicorps during the internal unrest in Germany just after the war. You get decals for five historical vehicles, one each of the following types: Whippet beute tank, Garford Putilov armoured car, Ehrhardt armoured car, Armstrong-Whitworth armoured car, and Izhorski-Fiat armoured car. There are kits to be found of all these types Also as a sort of bonus, to be used in dioramas, you get a poster, a road sign and some revolutionary graffiti - all in 1/72 scale!

And the third one, Set Nr 72022, is for vehicles of different types, both softskins and armoured cars, used by the German Army during WW1. You get decals for four historical vehicles, one each of the following types: A7V Überlandwagen, Ehrhardt armoured car, Büssig armoured car and a captured Lancia 1Z armoured car. You also get five sets of the Imperial coat of arms, that was often used on different softskin vehicles, both trucks and light cars.

The historical accuracy of the decals are very good, as they are clearly based on individual vehicles. I have tested them "in action", and they adhere very well, and the film (which you have to trim away carefully, as the entire sheet is decal paper) is thin.

They are done on a ALPS printer, which I guess is the only practical way of doing decals that don't have the mass appeal as decals of, say, yet another Messerschmitt. It is a system that prints white very good (actually the ONLY computer printer that prints white) and also single basic colours, like black, red, blue etc. They are very sharp and on the money. Even really tiny lettering stands out perfectly. The match is very good - except on some of the Abteilung circles in the Mk IV Beute set, that are a bit off center.

The problem comes when there are different shades of colours. The printer makes these shades by blending the colours, and if you study the end result in magnification, you can see the pixels. This is pretty much unavoidable if you use this technique. Now I don't think that this is a big problem, as you only see it when you get up close. And as some 80-90% of the markings we need are just... white (and the ALPS system, as mentioned, is very good at doing white) this will still result in very usable decals.

If you are into WW1 Military modelling you will need these decals! They are also very inspiring, as they suddenly make it possible to do a lot of vehicles that sported unusual markings that you just can't do by hand. I for one will soon do that famous Freicorps Whippet with the big skull, using the decals above!

Highly recommended!