Pzkpfw V Ausf A (Sdkfz 171) Panther #1

Pzkpfw V Panther  was designed to stand against enemy tank encountered for the first time on Eastern Front, Soviet T-34. It was a product of necessity rather than careful armament plan (such as Tiger), where design featured very similar ideas to it's Russian counterpart. This Panther comes from Tamiya in 1:35, the subject of my next build. I picked a unit from Grossdeutschland division. It is going to be straight-out-of-the-box build, with neither PE details nor other accessories. 

Kit comes as 3 plastic runners, two part superstructure and set of vinyl tracks (which to me look at least fine comparing to rather expensive metal tracks, twice exceeding kit's price). There are two figures provided but level of detail is rather poor, so in case of idea of "populating" this build I will use Dragon kit instead

Assembly of Tamiya's Panther was very straightforward, only thing I had to plan was assembly of road wheels, which, if fixed before painting would make painting/weathering of lower hull difficult. I left all wheels detached, separately airbrushed along with rest of the model. Deciding which unit to build took some research, but settled with Grossdeutschland division paint scheme - dunkergelb as base color & olivegrun as camouflage pattern (AK 753 & AK 752 from German War Colors 1937-1944 set). After complete superstructure & turret assembly I used Tamiya XF63 for pre-shading. Couple thin layers of AK 753 followed.

When acrylic paints have dried I used enamel base varnish to seal base colors and applied decals (don't know why I have not applied decals before varnishing?). Next, black Wash was used on all flat surfaces of the model and various shades of black and brown oil paints were used to create watermarks on superstructure. Kit provides quite a few options for various theaters of war, the only thing missing out of decal sheet would be set of 'panther emblems' (for GD division) which used to be painted on turret's side. Weathering is going to be pretty much similar to what I have done with Panzer IV, with addition of mud, or however it is going to turn out...