75th Anniversary of Battle of Monte Cassino and Northern Italy (Army Build)

I’m going to use the roughly the same approach to basing that I used for the Fallschirmjager earlier in this project. I did however have a lot of problems in painting the pollyfilla in and around some of the models so this time, I’m going to try to colour the pollyfilla before application.

With no better idea, I simply mixed in a dark brown with the pollyfilla until all of the white had been coloured. In doing so, I was adding more liquid and just needed to plan a longer drying time. You can see the mixture in the photo below.

Once mixed, I simply applied the mixture in the same way as described in the Fallschirmjager basing below in this project (2nd photo). It takes time to tease the pollyfilla over the bases up to the boots but worth the effort. I then sprinkled with sand and added some small cork chips as rocks.

A spray varnish sealed the sand down although it did leave a satin finish. I then covered this with a dark brown wash (third photo).

I then began the highlighting steps starting with a heavy over brush of flat earth, then a dry brush of stone grey (1st photo) before ending in a very light dry brush of light grey (2nd photo). I then painted the visible plastic base flat earth and applied the platoon colour markings.

Finally, due to the satin finish and to protect the paint on the base, I went over everything again with a matt varnish (3rd and 4th photo)

During the Fallschirmjager basing, I felt that the flocking followed by static grass looked far better than just one or the other so I will repeat it here.

I simply applied random blobs of PVA to the base and sprinkled 3 different colours of flock over. Once dry, I applied a watered down PVA to the seal these in and once this dried, applied more pva over the flocked area and applied the static grass.

I may go back and add some small bushes, particularly to the snipers and MG teams who are more likely to have sought out the cover but for the time being, these are ready for the table top.

Now that I’ve completed all of the infantry for both sides of the battle, I can start on the armour that will be required for the later battles in Northern Italy.