British Bolt Action Army

First up is a British Army 6 Pounder AT gun. The gun was a little small for the base, so I used bits of plastic sprues to support the middle of the gun’s base struts. When I covered these with filler I bedded the gun well down into “the ground” to make the somewhat fragile model a bit stronger. This also covered the bases of the 3 soldiers glued to the same base. I’m quite tempted to add sandbag s around the gun as well, but haven’t decided yet the best way to do that.

The sharp eyed will spot some of the filler clinging to a few crevices on the figures and gun. Fear not, as once fully dry these little bits brush off really easily with an old toothbrush or cocktail stick. It’s normally a good idea to rub off any little fragile spikes of filler on the base itself with the ball of your thumb before you start priming.

The filler doesn’t really want to be deeper that 1cm or the core of it may never set solid – for deeper bases you need to either need to build the filler up in layers, or build a structure underneath it and cover that – off cuts of old plastic sprues can work well for that.

Next up is a British Paras 75mm Pack Howitzer, followed by a Vickers mmg, another 6 pounder and a medium mortar – not an optimised list just what I seem to have acquired over the last year.  I have a terrible memory if picking up minis after a few months of playing other games, so I find it useful to stick labels under the bases saying what the unit is.  I’ll leave the glue to set for a while, then cover the base with filler like before to bed the gun into the base and hide the soldiers metal bases.

The photos above show how I’ve built a plastic framework of sprues under the entrenchment before covering this with filler. The next stage will be to make a few sandbags to add to the top of these… If I can ever find where I’ve put my Das clay.