Road To Rangoon - Burma, 1943: WIP Jungles & Type 97 Wreckage

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;

Or close the wall up with our English dead.

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man

As modest stillness and humility:

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

Then imitate the action of the tiger...

-Shakespeare, Henry V

"Road to Rangoon" will chronicle my building of a Burma theater board for Adepticon 2016 BA Nationals and, later this year, a British army based in the CBI Theater. First up are some jungle stands and Type 97 wrecks.

The trees in each stand consist of some plastic palm trees and low plastic shrubbery I ordered from a Chinese seller on Ebay for about $16. I intermixed them with some low "deciduous" clump foliage trees from Woodland Scenics and some plastic aquarium plants. The stands and bases are textured with my usual play sand ground mixture, with four circular sections left untextured on each base to accommodate four jungle stands. There's even a small log trail through one based on a picture I came across. 

The Nationals organizer was nice enough to provide me with four miscast Type 97 tanks, unfortunately they lacked hatches, MGs, cannons, and turret rails! So I set out to scratchbuild some and I'm actually really happy with the results. Rails are made out of 20g jeweler's wire, cannons and MGs from metal tubing, hatches from plasticard, and turret hatches from push pins with the pin portion snipped off. While not 100% accurate, they look effective and realistic. Next up is painting of everything, then unto the terraced rice paddies....