Earthshaker Gun Emplacement

Another catch up post this evening, this one dragged up from way back...well 2007/2008 anyway.

At the time I planned to have a whole artillery detachment with at least a single battery of emplaced Earthshakers along with a number of smaller pieces (plus trojans, sentinel powerlifters etc).

In the end I dropped it as being just a dream I would never get to fullfill (sigh...). As such the emplacement got trashed and the earthshaker (and it's sisters) got sold off.

Anyway, to the model.

The basic structure is foamboard. It was an absolute nightmare to cut due to everything being curved.

The circular recess cut into the top of the gun 'deck' is so that the gun itself could turn. The walls got a coat of filler which after sanding down received a coat of GW Roughcoat.

I took the Earthshaker base panel and after much cutting and sanding had just the base of the gun itself which was then glued centrally onto a disc of 1mm styrene (the picture below shows what I mean much clearer). A larger circle of treadplate was cut which would fit into the emplacement gun deck area, The central hole is smaller than the disc of styrene and rather than gluing the two together the disc was sandwhich between more styrene which was glued to the treadplate - thus allowing the disc of styene mounting the gun to turn in position.

A small crank handle was added, this is the means that the crew would rotate the gun.

The gun platform above was then glued into position.

Some bracing, with chaos star additions were added around the curved wall to make it look a bit more interesting.

At the rear more styrene was added around the base and onto the step. A chain fence was also added to stop the crew falling off the edge. The central span was removable to allow resupply to be more easily carried out.

The base was then textured with a muddy feel and more detailing added to the emplacement, such as the vox unit, some stores etc.

And finally we have the gun and crew in position. The crew are shown on bases but the plan was to eventually pin (or magnetise) them in place so that the bases could be removed but the crew themselves could be taken out of the emplacement as they were killed off.

Annoyingly I don't appear to have a picture from the front...

Overall I liked the final result, though gaming wise I am not sure how practical they would of been using a full battery of them - though having all that room to deploy infantry behind the curved wall in front of the gun would of been handy.