Paolo Parente’s Dust: Some Very Cool Kits

As I’ve made my “Gundam/Scifi Pivot”, to paraphrase a term from the political spectrum, I’ve “discovered” quite a few really cool models that I had never encountered previously. One of these are the kits from the tabletop game “Dust“.

I first heard of it from Lincoln Wright, of Paint on Plastic. He’d mentioned the game, and how it had quite a few very cool and unusual kits that went along with it. While I am no gamer, Dust appears similar to other table top games, such as Warhammer 40K, but the setting is an alternate World War II scenario, post-1945.

And the kits are very, very unique looking. They’ve taken familiar shapes- tanks, aircraft, other vehicles, and personnel, and given them a bit of a scifi/alternate universe twist. Tanks on legs. A P-38 lookalike only with jet engines. A Russian helicopter that bears a strong resemblance to what an Mi-24 might have looked like if it was developed in WWII. There are also dismounted infantry figures, with a wide assortment of weapons.

I contacted the folks at Dust, and they said the kits are 1/48 scale.

You can even go to their Download page and check out the instructions for some of the kits. It’s a great way to see what you’d be getting in the box.

I plan to give one of these kits a go later this year. I’m thinking this “‘K-AL704 Mickey (Light) / Steel Rain (Light) / Pounder (Light)” looks a bit cool. I have no idea what the name itself means- but I’m not too worried about that. I think it will look great with some bodacious weathering applied!

Be sure and check out their site, and see what you think. If you’ve built any of these kits, I’d love to hear from you.

Here are some examples of built and painted kits from the world of Dust.

And these look to be 100% rivet-counter proof! I bet you could have quite a bit of fun with a contest judge, too. “Sure, it was an actual armored vehicle. An experimental one. See- I have a Wikipedia print out right here.” 🙂