I've finished up my first Heavy Field Battery for All Quiet on the Martian Front. They are such beautiful models I felt I had to do some extra work on them.
The kits come with a lot of crew figures, but the poses are kind of generic. With a bit of bending and cutting and filling I was able to make them very dynamic. I threw in a couple of Blue Moon figures to increase the variety—although those Blue Moon guys constantly flaunt the regulation to wear your gas mask at all times!
One of the models I left basically as-is, and just added a guy about to pull the lanyard to fire the gun.
It's gonna be loud!
The most challenging conversion was this loading scene. I cut off the breech block and drilled out the barrel and then glued the breech back into place. I then modified two figures so they are ramming the heavy shell into the breech. The rammer is scratch-built.
On the third one I added some wire to show the crane lowering a shell onto the loading cradle.
Notice the guy on the left cranking the windlass. I added the hand crank to all the guns with a piece of bent wire.
And I did a lot of work to the base to add the wood planking so that it matches the resin gun emplacements that Alien Dungeon makes for the game.
It was quite a bit of extra work, but I'm very pleased with the results.
reveals a long-lost Martian tripod.
