Trench Line Fortifications for Warhammer 40K

As part of my Armies on Parade entry this year I was working on a fair amount of terrain. Almost all of it ended up in the final display, but there was one piece that didn't quite make the final cut. It wasn't that the piece wasn't coming out well, it's just that I had more trouble than expected integrating it into the final display. The top (surface) layer of the display was originally intended to have a defense emplacement on top of one of the low hills, but I had trouble integrating the emplacement into the overall theme of the board, so I ended up leaving it out. It's essentially done at this point, I may go back and so a little more shading in a couple of spots, but I think it came out pretty well.

So this terrain piece is just the Wall of Martyrs - Imperial Defence Implacement from GW (and yes, the British do spell "defense" with a "c" so that's not a typo my American friends). I'd decided to go all out with the painting on it, but still make it fit within the Soviet green theme of the force. The detail along the bottom of the walls is a little crude because these are not produced using slide molds, so there are no undercuts on the large plastic pieces. 

The base looked more "stone like" than "earth like" to me, so I went with a stone colored paint job along the wall bases rather than going with stone walls themselves. That was probably a mistake from the standpoint of integrating this into the overall base as the gray stone really stuck out obviously on the earth colored parade board. So I made the difficult decision to drop it from the display (after spending several hours painting it.

That being said, having some more terrain painted up is never a bad thing. I've since picked up the Imperial Bunker from the same set, and will likely pick up the Imperial Defence Line as well so I can make a small set and they'd all fit together. I also bought an Imperial Bastion thinking I'd add it to the display, but once I realize how many vehicles I'd finished this year, I decided to hold off on construction and build it later.

So yet another thing done for the collection this year. Now that Armies on Parade has finished up, I've been able to move into high gear on several other projects. I'm hoping to have a few more items finished up before the end of the year, and I've started on a new army that I'll be building and painting in parallel with the Genestealer Cult.