As they did with the 1/35 scale Matilda Mk III kit, Tamiya has hit a home run here with the Sturmgeschutz III B. The molding is crisp, clean, with little in the way of mold lines and absolutely no -- as in zero, none, nada, zip -- flash. I also haven't found any ejector-pin marks in places where they would be visible on the finished model. Tamiya has avoided the current manufacturing craze as exemplified by Dragon, Trumpeter, and Academy, of producing a kit with the maximum possible number of pieces, regardless of whether or not those pieces actually serve a useful purpose in enahncing the model's realism or appearance. Instead Tamiya seems to have found an ideal middle ground where the number of pieces has been thoroughly thought out with an eye toward striking the balance between accuracy and trouble-free assembly. Just as was so in their Matilda, there's no "busywork" here, putting together needlessly complicated subassemblies. The detail on the suspension in particular is remarkable: the stub axles are molded separately, to allow you to articulate the roadwheels if you so choose, while the detail on the roadwheels is so well-rendered that you just want to sit for a few minutes and admire it before beginning painting and assembly. The tracks are the usual Tamiya vinyl single-piece tracks, with good detail inside and out. While the model snobs will deprecate this type of track, calling them "rubber bands" or worse, they can be made to look as good as aftermarket track sets, provided you are willing to put in the same amount of work that the aftermarket tracks require. Because Tamiya has moved away from the "models as toys" concept, the suspensions on their tracked vehicles are no longer made so that the wheels can rotate -- in the Stug III the road wheels are fixed, only the drive sprockets and idlers move, and this is done to facilitate installing the tracks. What this means is that you can now create the sort of sagging that the track snobs insist can only be achieved through separate-link tracks and aftermarket sets. These vinyl tracks also, again because they are no longer considered moving parts, can be painted and weathered just as well as any of the plastic or metal track sets. There is a reasonably detailed mounting for the main gun, which will be visible is you leave the hatches on top of the superstructure open, and it just begs to be super-detailed, as does the rest of the interior. In fact, the entire kit practically begs to worked on and worked over, there is so much potential there for an old-school modeler like myself. You know the type -- someone who wants to do more than just slap parts together (that's what God made Lego for) and instead wants to bring new depths to the detailing on a kit, whether through scratch-building, adding extra "fiddly bits" or painting and weathering. In that vein, I've actually done a minor conversion to this kit, turning it into an "Ausf. C" by doing some minor surgery on a couple of hull plates above the driver's position and substituting the "C" type idler wheels (which are included in the kit) for the "B" type idlers. An added bonus in this kit is the inclusion of a small sheet of photoetched brass parts and a turned aluminium gun barrel. For the price, it's hard to find a better deal. I've rarely been as happy with akit straight out of the box -- the last one was the Matilda Mk III -- as I have been with the Stug III B. If you're a fan of SP artillery, or German armor in general, you need to add this model to your collection!
