Entrenchments

Early War Miniatures may be best known for their unrivalled catalogue of obscure military hardware (I mean, who else does Norwegian field and mountain guns, in any scale?), but their vacuform terrain pieces aren’t half bad either. Being made of plastic, these field fortifications are incredibly light, a welcome difference from the far heavier resin emplacements available from other manufacturers.

First up is a large infantry strongpoint with “built up banks, piled sandbags riveted with wooden posts and wooden wattling” in the words of proprietor Paul Thompson. They come two to a bag and admittedly don’t look like much in their natural state, but they do paint up quite nicely.

The trick is to lather all of the exposed ground with sand. This adds an extra layer of detail which can then be brought out via drybrushing. For painting I relied upon the emulsion equivalents of my go-to colours for bases, namely Vallejo Game Colour Earth and Bonewhite. Consequently a basecoat of Nippon Paint’s Friar Tuck was applied, followed by a dry brush of Natural Oak.

The pieces was then flocked with my own custom blend of “meadow” static grass from Noch mixed with a potpourri of Woodland Scenics Fine Turf (specifically Burnt Grass, Green Grass, and Yellow Grass). Tajima 1 grass tufts were then added as a final touch to lend the pieces that extra bit of oomph.

The same method was used on the smaller sanger pieces, as the rest of the pictures will attest. For the gun pit’s wooden planks a basecoat of Foundry Bay Brown Shade was followed with drybrushings of Vallejo Gold Brown and Stonewall Grey, as per a tutorial from the Wargames Table. Sandbags were painted Vallejo Sand Yellow and washed with Army Painter Soft Tone inks.

So they you have it, smashingly simple readymade dug-in positions for those of us too timid to muck about with foamboard, mdf, and a modicum of imagination.