Salvaged Marder III's from Axis & Allies

 So, with my Fallschirmjaeger list...I have the option to run very few armour units.  One of my options is to run some Marder III's (or II's).

I was going to purchase a proper box of plastic ones - but then decided to try a little salvage operation on some Axis & Allies Marders from eBay.

These are...a little soft detailed, and tanks often have awful soft-bendy gun barrels

 

I stripped them down, cleaned some edges, cut off the gun barrels, the gun breeches, and the melted smudge that served as exhaust mufflers on the back deck.

I cleaned up the chassis in alcohol and then began assembling the "fixes".  I drilled and cut holes in the gun shield so I could wedge in the Zis-3 guns that I'm using as PaK 40 stand-ins.  I added some fuel cans, a couple of bags, and some track links.

 I built new mufflers out of T-34 fuel cans, and added a small rail using bent wire.

Primed.  You can see how soft the detail is, but I'm hoping paint will bring out some more detail and hide some of the softness of the sculpts.

Some of the soft and crappy edges are still visible, but when painted these actually look really nice alongside my other 15mm German stuff.

Really happy with the end result.  The guns ended up being too big so I had to cut them in half, remove a section and then glue them "mostly" in place from the front and back.

The mufflers ended up looking good, but being rather large.  It's actually not terribly obvious when handling them...just bugs me a little!