In late 1916 a proposal was put forth to the German War Ministry for an 'impenetrable mobile fortress'. The end design was a truly impressive behemoth that started trials in January 1918 and entered combat two months later.  Main armament was a 5.7cm cannon with six machine guns as auxiliary armament. Armor plating was 20mm over most of the vehicle with 30mm in the front and 10mm on the roof. A normal crew was 18, though 26 could be carried.

It must have been an oven inside this beast as it also contained two engines that managed to move it at a top speed of 10 kph. Only 20 of these were built and only one remains. That one is on display at the Queensland Museum in Australia.

Well, this is the type of armor kit that I like! No need to fumble around with a multitude of small parts. No need to curse and whine about having to paint road wheels or fiddle with tracks. The kit comes on two sprues of well formed and well detailed dark grey plastic. I found no flash on the parts. Ejector marks were all on the inside of bits. There were some small sink marks on either side of the four side windows, but they were very slight and should be easy to fill.

The kit is simplicity itself. The tracks and road wheels are all one part. All that it needs is paint. Personally, I'd leave them off until after the whole thing has been built and painted. It will make it much easier to detail paint if that is done. The machine gun swivels are all separate as are the barrels. They just snap in place so that they can be moved as one desires.

The instructions are very good and quite simple as one would expect with a basic kit like this. The decal options are for five different tanks. Basically all that is really different are a few of the markings on them. The color given for the outside is a mottling of FS10219 and 10118 over a base of FS 16118. These should be easily found at any hobby shop. Not sure if these would have been sprayed on or painted on with a brush, but I'd guess that it wouldn't really make much difference. The decals are fairly well done and seems a lot like Blue Rider or Modeldecals so should work quite well with minimal fuss. I've darkened the sheet quite a bit so you can see the white markings on it.

This is a kit that I can honestly say is for all skill levels. It is simple enough for a beginning modeler, yet offers a good basis for a more detailed work by the more experienced among us.

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