COBI Marder III Sd.Kfz.139 Set 3050

COBI's Marder III Sd.Kfz. 139 is a 1:35 model built from 420 blocks, 18 cm long, produced under licence from Relic Entertainment for Company of Heroes 3. The tracks work, the wheels rotate, the gun moves and there is a place for a figure in the fighting compartment. A German mechanic figure with prints front and back is included, in a new brick colour introduced for this set. No stickers.

Two and a half metres tall, and no roof

Look at the proportions. The gun and its crew sit in an open box perched on top of a small tank chassis, and the whole thing stands about 2.5 metres high — taller than the Panzer 38(t) it was built on and taller than most tanks of the period.

That is a serious problem for a vehicle whose entire tactic is to shoot first from concealment. A tank destroyer wants to be low enough to hide behind a hedge; the Marder III needed a building or a fold in the ground.

The open top was worse. No roof means splinters, shrapnel, grenades and anything falling from above come straight in, and the crew were protected only from the front and sides by plate a few millimetres thick.

Both were accepted deliberately. Germany in 1942 needed something — anything — that could destroy a T-34, and it needed it in months rather than years. Enclosing the compartment and lowering the silhouette would have meant a new vehicle. Bolting a captured Soviet gun onto an obsolete Czech chassis meant weeks.

Company of Heroes

The licence is worth a word. Company of Heroes models cover, suppression and line of sight rather than hit points, which means a Marder III behaves in the game much as it did in reality: devastating from ambush, useless once spotted, and dead if infantry get close.

In the COBI range

Set 3131 is the Marder III in Afrika Korps colours with two figures and a towed 5 cm PaK 38. Set 2666 is the Panzer 38(t) this chassis came from. The other Company of Heroes 3 sets are 3042, 3043, 3044 and 3046.

Specifications

Pieces: 420 · Figures: 1 mechanic · Scale: 1:35 · Licensed by Company of Heroes 3 · No stickers
Model dimensions: 18 × 7 × 9 cm (7.1 × 2.8 × 3.5 in)