Last year I picked up some of the superb Belgian Gates from Pendraken Miniatures, made by Red Vector. Produced in mdf they are available in 15mm, 20mm, and 28mm.
These kits are straightforward to build as seen here in my quick build video, and build up nicely. I just couldn’t help adding a little more detail!
Belgian Gates, also known as Element-C, were quite a distinctive obstacle on the Normandy beaches; the angular nature of the gates tends to stand out when you look at them in period photos or if you have chance to see one in France.
So out came the L shaped styrene strips, and after some careful measuring, snipping and dry-fitting I was happy with the first try.
I’ve simply then painted them up using a similar technique as for my DIY Czech Hedgehogs, which you can read about here. I was aiming for a well used look, as while some of these obstacles would have been newly constructed many had been built several years before and then transported to the Normandy coast. Given they spent much of their time on or in the water’s edge, I thought it would be sensible to rust them up a bit!
Stage 1: Undercoated with my go-to Halfords Grey Primer rattle can.
Stage 2: Basecoated with a spray of Plastic Soldier Company German Field Grey rattle can.
Step 3: Vallejo Dark Rust brushed onto lower surfaces and into the corners.
Step 4: Vallejo Rust Wash liberally applied, mainly to lower areas and into the corners. Left to dry overnight.
Step 5: Vallejo Orange Rust to bring out some further detail, added to the joins between beams and sparingly to some of the edges. I did this sparingly on some, more liberally on others, to create some randomness – I didn’t want completely uniform/identically finished models.
Step 6: Drybrushed with Vallejo Light Rust paying attention to edges.
Step 7: Vallejo Green Wash added very sparingly to a few areas low on the Belgian Gates, to represent some of the grime/seaweed they’d likely have collected.
So here we have the finished models, quite happy with how they’ve turned out and they’ll look good set up on Sword beach with a load of Czech Hedgehogs etc.
In summary, these are great little kits which with a little extra work come up brilliantly.
WARGAME DESPATCHES 