DIY Fortifications MG nests for 15mm Flames of War

Dun dun dun, I have made good on my initial research into US fortifications! Let's jump in, shall we?

I had the dimensions from the 1944 handbook, page 64, so I had to do some maths to scale it down! There they are, if you want to do something similar. The dimensions for the excavated dirt boundary are supposed to be 3' wide, which was a bit too much for the space given on the base. 

I cut the base from plasticard (4mm thick I think?) because I could easily cut the foxhole squares in plasticard compared to a medium base. I glued this to an index card, let the glue dry, then X-acto'd it off the card so there's a bottom to the foxholes that I can glue dudes to. 

Speaking of dudes, I have a pretty limited bits box and a rather tight budget. These are a machine gunner and commander model from the US Stuarts box. 

I decided to make a generic MG Nest for funsies, inspired by the ModelDads blog. 

Pretty standard after getting the foam cut just right. Add some spackle, glue on some dirt from the yard (treated in an oven and sifted through an old window screen), and get a'paintin'. For the shell casings, I don't have an brass wire, but I did have some spare hanging wire in one of my hobby supply boxes. It looks good!

Pretty dark there on the earth colors. I use a $1 Americana Burnt Umber for my base color on everything earth. To finish the painting on these, I salvaged what I could of my GW Graveyard Earth as a heavy drybrush, then did successive drybrushes of mixes with GW Desert Yellow mixed in. The tankers got the usual: Khaki jackets, Brown Violet helmets, GW Beige Brown goggle straps and outlining the lenses, lenses black with minor highlights, the skin is GW Tallarn Flesh as a base with GW Elf Flesh on top. Simple!

Some simple flocking and...

Not bad, I reckon! I like them. I plan on making a few more of the generic ones but with snow for my Finns. I'll have to make some trench sections if I go the Fortified Company route for the Finns... and tank obstacles, and actually finish the rest of the barbed wire and minefields I've started... oh boy!