Scratch-Made Fortifications

Hi everyone, I'm back with a quick article that demonstrates how I made some scratch-built fortifications that don't necessarily approach Battlefield in a Box quality, but will certainly get the job done and look good on the tabletop!

Not this extensive, but I didn't have slave labor like the Germans did

In Flames of War your basic pioneer fortifications, barbed wire and minefields, can help confuse and delay an enemy's approach to your defenses. This isn't an article on the tactics of such tools, but suffice to say that they can be great at stalling an enemy's advance or steering him in another direction. Sections of barbed wire and minefields are marked by strips of modeled terrain 8" long and roughly 1.5" wide.

My material of choice for the base was simply something I had lying around: plexiglass. Just use whatever sort of material you have that can be cut to the above dimensions and will be durable enough to withstand the demands of the tabletop.

The strips on the far left were going to be trenches, but their construction didn't pan out

Since my next plan was to base them in a similar way to my normal troops I would need to score the plastic with a hobby knife.

To clearly make the point that the minefield strips contained, you know, mines, I decided to model it in a way that left the mines somewhat exposed. Obviously this is not the way it would work in reality, but for the tabletop it would be useful. To model the mines themselves I rummaged through my FoW bits and looked for round tank parts left on metal sprues: hatches, hubcaps, wheels, etc.

Once the mortar has dried over the slightly exposed "mines"

For the barbed wire sections I used pieces of Normandy Beach Obstacles from the old 29th Infantry Division boxed set. I then used normal Elmer's glue to adhere sand to the bases. Use whatever sand equivalent you have for the base; I use sand because I live near a beach.

At this stage I basecoated them with flat-black Krylon spraypaint, which was followed by an airbrushing of a dark brown over the entire base. You could just spray a dark brown I suppose and still get the same results. Or spray black and then use a large brush for the brown.

This was followed by a drybush of a tan-brown mix, but your should use whatever will blend with your troops the best.

At some point I just painted all of the metal fortifications and mines black, then gave then the No. 2 pencil treatment. I can't really remember at what stage i did that because I was so excited to use this:

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Army Painter products rock! For the price they can't be beat. I had so much fun wrapping the wire around the post and obstacles...God I am a hopeless nerd...

That just about wraps it up for this article. Thanks for reading, and follow me on Twitter @piflamesofwar