Recently, Craig informed me he had acquired an STL file for some jungle bunkers  and IJA steel pillboxes, and asked if i wanted some. So, looking ahead to Operation Spring Awakening, and fielding a Jungle table there, I naturally said 'YES please!!' and after receiving pictures of them printed, I was even more excited and couldnt wait to get my hands on them! 

 Here is a pic of one of them, as sent to me by Craig, when it was hot off the printer, which got me salivating:

​And so once I got my hands on them I went to work, firstly applying Green Stuff World dark mud texture paint all over the earth parts, including the inside 'floor' ( Which, by the way takes a 60mm round base, so perfect for a small squad or a machine gun and crew!). Craig had mirrored the STL so that the two bunkers were different which is always a cool thing for the same table. 

After that and my usual layers of drybrushing the earth, and  layering and drybrushing the logs and sandbags on the sides ( hidden in the pic above), I started building up the undergrowth with several brands of ground cover , tufts and foliage, making sure to look like there was some re-growth on the mounds of earth around the not so recently built bunkers but not completely hiding the mound...and definitely not obscuring observation and narrowing fire lanes from the bunker itself.

Now came for me the most important part; building up the secondary undergrowth that was growing/cut and placed regularly by the Japanese occupants to break up the shape of their cover. For this, I didn't want to utilise the oft-used but equally often unrealistic- looking aquarium plants, and so i remembered that my lovely Mother-in -law had given me some 'Scenic Textures' branded scenic pieces last Christmas that are perfectly in scale to jungle vegetation. 

If you like what you see in the photos below, you can buy the scenic textures branded stuff in New Zealand from Kapiti Hobbies, by pasting this link in your browser;

https://www.kapitihobbies.com/collections/scenic-textures

and after many layers of foliage, washes and drybrushing of leaves, etc, here are the final results!:

​I was very happy with how they have turned out! And especially happy with how the extra washes and drybrushing of the foliage paid off. I can say the Scenic Textures product without doing so is still an excellent one, but that little bit more pushed the narrative of yellowing cut Atap fronds etc. on top and all the various sizes and colours of tufts really helped bring it to life too i thought.

Here are front and back images of the first bunker:

​a quick layer of Tamiya TS80 flat varnish spray sorted out any shine from washes and the plastic foliage itself, as well as the satin sheen that the GSW mud texture basing product has. At the same time, I also hit a squad of Bamboo spear fighters that I had acquired 'dipped' in a bulk purchase years ago and had been sitting around unused and way too shiny since...so excuse the figure painting not up to my usual standard as it wasn't done by me!

(Incidentally- it seems the people most likely to sell bulk IJA armies are the most likely to have purchased Spear Fighters en masse...as well as the 10 painted ones above, I have acquired another 50 in various lots, all of which have never been used but threaten to pole vault from my shelves onto my wargames room table sometime in the far future!)

And here on the runway is bunker number 2, which is wearing foliage from the house of Scenic Textures also;

​So I am very pleased with how they turned out, and very thankful Craig spotted that I might find them useful. I cant recommend the combination of products highly enough based on the results, and hope you enjoy looking at them , and players in my event enjoy playing with them on the table.

Now...if only I could find assembly instructions for my Knights of Dice jungle hut i have ready to go...!!

Another terrain update soon.

Dan