"D" Minus 14...

And a three-day weekend for me means I'm able to work on an number of different tasks for my BKC game on the 27th.  

Giovanni has painted the Japanese infantry, and is just awaiting the bases- I need to get them up to him this weekend.

On my end, I hope to finish assembling the Japanese AFV's this weekend.  The weather is the pits for spray painting as it is spitting rain, but if the dry weather comes back I'll be giving them a black undercoat prior to an overspray of khaki green.  

If all goes to plan (hah!) I hope to achieve the following in the next few days;

• finish the lists for the opposing forces and post them here.
• work on the SMG company for the Soviet tank brigade.  Three stands, very "do-able" as they are already undercoated and just need the details added.  
• ditto with a stand of combat engineers.
• work on the Japanese defences.

The latter is going according to plan.  Earlier this week I glued the Kallistra trench sections to a baseboard,  and left it a few days to thoroughly dry.  Then I added some trench ends and outcrops from pieces of leftover foam from my Collina della Formica project (these trenches will be duel-purpose!) and used bits of the same to fill in the gaps where the trench sections meet.

This will have to wait to dry out again, but on Sunday I will fair in the gaps with acrylic wood putty, and then add my own home-brew  papier-mâché "gunk" to the baseboard to texture the whole thing.  That should all be done by Monday- I took the day off from work just to do this as it can take a while, and is best done without others looking on and freaking out at the mess it creates!

Then it is a matter of adding the wood to the trench sides, some sandbags to the parapet, and adding a detachable observation post using a plastic kit I have lying around.  

 

I picked up this kit for a pittance at a hobby shop years ago.  I'll use it for the observation post and pillbox.  Simple to construct, and they should look good. 

 

The kit comes with two rather Germanic-looking pillboxes.  I've glued them together and cut out an embrasure on the end of the trench- one will be covering the approach to the front of the trenches, the other will cover the flank.  

Later the pillboxes will be blended into the works with putty and rubble, so they should look much more menacing- as well as hiding their rather "Teutonic" heritage so that they will appear more generic, and not look out of place when I use 28mm minis with it.  

Although designed for 28mm, the Kallistra trenches certainly work with my based 20mm figures, as this photo shows.

 

If I can get the texturing out of the way by Monday, I can then work on the details a bit at a time on weeknights.  This hopefully means  being able to paint the whole thing next weekend- well ahead of schedule for the game.

Having worked on the anthill last year means I have a pretty good idea how much work in involved, and this is a comparatively much simpler project.

If time allows, I'll also work on some barbed wire belts, but I don't want to bite off more than I can chew.