War in the desert is a dusty business

Somewhere in Africa...
(box markings,15 Pz.Div., North Africa, 1942)

Originally, I was going to build this model completely out of the box.  "Unfortunately", I saw a picture of Marder on the move somewhere in Africa, and decided that I was going to build this one.  For that I needed to add various pieces of stowage and modify barrel support.  The barrel support arm is in the box depicted as lowered and all I needed to do is to modify it slightly to actually support the barrel.

Before I bought the Hauler photo-etch set, I decided to improve on the look of the toolbox and drill all of the small holes.  Note to self:  it's possible, but it's much easier to just use the aftermarket :).

As various pieces of stowage, I used elements from "Jerry Cans" set from Tamiya and resin blanket from Black Dog (the latter will be later used on some other Marder, most likely built in Winter camo).  A little can holder where the water can is located comes from Hauler photo etch (which will also wait its' turn).

Resin figures come from a fantastic set from Art Of War.  These are easily the best figures that I saw in this scale.  I can definitively recommend them.  Unfortunately, I chickened out and asked my friend to paint them.

I used a custom mix of Tamiya's XF-60 and XF-59 (custom, as in "I just mixed them - without any particular ratio).  Dirt, dust, washes and filters were done using MIG products.

This is how it looks when finished:

Since this model will be displayed among other 38(t) variants as a part of my modeling club's display at AMPS Nationals 2010, I decided to put it on a decent base:

And this is how it looked during the build process: