A little while back, a friend of mine showed me pictures of a model someone had made for Gaslands of the now infamous "Brexit Battle Bus". You know the one - it had a certain statement written on the side of it and sort of divided opinion right down the middle?
Well, he was adamant that I should make one in 28mm scale, and I agreed on the proviso that I could find a coach that would work in 1:43 scale, which I find works best with most companies miniatures and table-top terrain.
The problem is that coaches in that scale are both scarce and expensive if you're buying them in pristine condition. So I had to wait until one popped up on eBay that was cheap on account of being screwed up, but yet not too ruined for my purposes.
The basic coach turned up missing a door and other small bits, none of which were a concern to me. And so it got a wash, the decals removed with lighter fluid and then a second more intense wash before it was time for turning the thing into something worthy of the wasteland highways.
I went into the build with only the vaguest idea of what I wanted the thing to look like, being more inspired by the parts that I was able to find in the bits box and where they seemed to fit. Once I was happy with the look, I gave it a cheap rattle-can prime with black and then a heavy zenithal white.
All it took was a couple of coats of red acrylic craft paint to get the basic colour down, and then a tour around the bus with other colours to define the details a little better. Being rough at this stage helped to add to the ruined feel of the bus, and I knew that there was some heavy weathering and washing to come in the next stages.
I needed something to write on the side of the bus, but recreating the original slogan seemed to be pretty unimaginative and likely to fly up the arses of people that were on both sides of the Brexit debate, and so I settled on something more in keeping with the post-apocalyptic style of the thing:
"We sacrifice 350 million souls to Cthulu every day. Why not Ai! Shub Niggurath instead?"
For the record, this is supposed to be a bit of fun - not a political statement!
I finished the bus off by weathering it with a dark brown and then a metallic, followed by washing with diluted brown and black acrylic paints and a final dry-brushing with an ivory to bring out the finer details and give the impression of dust.
Let me know what you think, either here or on social media.
