Over the past couple days I built this simplified BKA 1125. I've never built a model from scratch before. It's mostly wood with some wire and card for hatches and gun barrels. The flags are hand painted. It's approximately 1/87th scale in order to better fit on the table. If it was truly 1/72 it'd be about an inch longer. The flash from the camera drowned out much of the details. I'm reluctant to apply any kind of wash to bring out all the hatches and things since that would primarily emphasize the wood grain. Some matte varnish would help.
The turrets are mounted on bits of wire so they can rotate. I also made a very crude katyusha launcher which can replace the rear MG turret. I think clipping the points off of toothpicks would work for rockets, but I don’t have any so no rockets at the moment. The MG turrets are made from 1/2” oak dowel left over from making axles for a machine. These have really strong grain and were a pain to work with. Basswood would have been better. The hull is a piece of pine I roughly cut with a jigsaw then shaped with a belt sander.
I’ll add a hull number when I get some decals.
Finished:
http://i.imgur.com/DFqIi.jpg With a coat of primer:
http://i.imgur.com/3Aclq.jpg Afloat:
http://i.imgur.com/4CwCU.jpg Supporting some badly painted naval infantry:
http://i.imgur.com/YMNVq.jpg For BKC, I think the stats would be something like:
Mv: 20 AT: 2/40 AP:3/80 CA: N/A Hits: 6 Sv: 6+ Cost: 125
+2 attacks instead of +1 for half range against soft targets.
The BKA-1125 was designed to operate in water as shallow as 0.5m so I should be able to move quite close to the edges of water features. Many were armed with 2 light AA machine guns so perhaps it could have AA capability for +25(?) points. Later in the war, the rear MG turret was frequently replaced with a katyusha launcher. This could allow one katyusha attack per boat for, say +100 points. The T-34 turret was modified to allow IDF so in BKC could function like an infantry gun. I’m not clear if they were used to transport marines or just for support.
Now I need to get some Romanians or Hungarians for opposed landings.
