I am really enjoying building these Unimodel kits. They have a huge range covering loads of World War 2 vehicles, some of which are a bit more obscure. I pick these up directly from an excellent Ukrainian Hobby shop which stocks pretty much the whole range. You can find them at https://www.hobby.dn.ua. Its far better to buy these kits direct from Ukraine as they work out at much better value. Postage from Ukraine to Australia is very reasonable too. Anyway check them out. I did pick up some Hetzers and a Sherman at the same time, which are next in line for building.

This Marder III is another of the German Self Propelled guns they came up with and its a pretty funny looking design. They just used the same chassis at the PzKpfw 38 Light Tank and jammed an AT gun on top. The hull and running gear are quite easy to build with four big wheels either side plus sprocket and drive wheel. The tracks are link and length and fitted really nicely. I always start with getting the sprocket wheel done first, but in this case it didn’t matter as the tracks all lined up perfectly.

The armour sections on the upper hull were a little bit tricky as the instructions tend to be a bit vague. Unimodel tend to include a little too many steps in their exploded diagrams so it can be hard to follow. Once i had fitted all the upper armour sections i found that the top rail would not fit across so i had to add an extra bit of plastic. No harm done. But the armour plate was the trickiest part of this model. You get some photo etched metal bits too. The basket at the back is metal you need to bend plus some other little bits here and there. Overall this was a lot of fun to build and a bit more challenging than the usual tank.

It doesn’t come with any crew, and for an open topped vehicle its crucial to have some crew hanging around doing their thing. I used AB Figures tank crew as usual. I had a lot of fun doing a peadot camo on their pants so i included a photo of them in mid paint under the magnifying glass light. The tank i tried a new camo scheme with green patches out lined in red brown. The kit comes with plenty of decals giving you options to do whatever you want. I liked this kit so much i immediately started work on one of the Unimodel Hetzers i also bought……