Pull up to the Bunker..

With huge apologies to Grace Jones for the post title....

I was sorting out some stuff I needed for a game recently and reflected on the large number of times my fortification terrain pieces have been used. Although I have plenty of trenches, barbed wire, pillboxes, dragons teeth etc one thing I'm lacking is actual bunkers, either of the shelter type or the artillery variety. On occasion I've even had to borrow bunkers from other people, oh the shame! So given the amount of re-use I get from terrain items, I thought I'd finally knuckle down and make some.

The mini-Maginot Line takes shape. The finished bunkers all lined up.

They are modelled on crude versions of WW2 German beach defence bunkers, albeit minus the extra concrete arms protecting the embrasure. Most of them I did as partially buried with the sides built up and some earth and grass on the roof.

At the rear, they all have a small door so attacking infantry don;t necessarily have to try and climb in through the gun slot. This example also has some air vents on top, made from Brodie helmets cut off from some spare Emhar WW1 British figures I had.

They all started life as one of these, a plastic end piece from a roller blind container. I have accumulated a fair collection of these over a number of bedroom renovations, and I picked a bunch of the more reasonable sized ones (approx 50mm each side). They were stuck down on 60x60 bases and textured with PVA, sand and static grass in the normal manner.

Some of them were very deep, so I cut them in half horizontally with a razor saw and made up new roofs from mount board, you can see the roof on this one. The embrasures were also cut into the plastic sides with a (very) sharp knife. To cover up the plastic-ness of them (and gaps in the roofs and walls), I slathered each in a thin layer of flexible builders filler, which also produced a pleasing concrete texture. 

To be used as shelters, the intention is to cover up the gun embrasure with lichen, as above.

And by placing a pillbox on top, they can be used as sheltered observation and command posts.

For an afternoons work and minimal expenditure, I was pleased with the results, and I can think of a number of scenarios where they will come in very handy, so I'll have to plan some games to make use of them.