AK-47 Republic 2025 Special Objective Build - Best Africa Garage

The Best Africa Garage

There is a third edition of AK47 Republic due out any time now.  To celebrate te release, the AK47 Republic Facebook Group has run a competition to create a "Special Objective".  To encourage players to put appropriate effort into it, there are a few rules:

• 10x3" base (designed to fit within a 6x12" template, leaving room for troops/vehicles around it)
• Must have a vehicle on it
• Must have a name badge/sign on it
• Can't just be a banana on a base.

 I wanted to try and build something a bit different from usual and after racking my brains for a while, decided on a garage.

Sketch plans

  After a bit of research, I decided on a fairly simple 2-bay building with a small attached office.  Quite a few of the examples I found were bare blockwork walls, but I preferred the rendered, painted sort.  I saw one with pale blue walls with a lower border of red and adopted that for my colour scheme.  My son let me borrow his watercolours to colourise my initial sketch.  For the sign, the "Best Africa Garage" sounded suitably confident and optimistic, so I went with that.

Base and walls

The base was cut from 3mm Foamex PVC sheet, the corners rounded slightly to reduce the risk of future damage.  The walls are 5mm foamcore with 5mm strips cut off some of the ends to make rabbet joints on the corners.  These are stronger than plain butt joints and also conceal the cut edge of the foam.

Test fit.

The parts were test fitted to make sure everything lined up OK and the angles of the roofs looked good.

Glued together.

Everything was glued together with thick PVA.

Main doorways.

The garage doors will be attached after the initial painting has been completed.

Lean-to construction.

The lean-to shelter at the back is created from some bits of barbecue skewer and a scrap of corrugated cardboard.

Corrugated roof.

The corrugated card comes from a computer game box (Starlink - the failed game that has provided fantastic spaceship toys to wargamers at about a tenth their original release price...), the outer layer peeled away very easily, leaving a fantastic, finely corrugated surface that is ideal for roofing 15mm wargame buildings.  All the roofing is constructed from the same corrugated card, glued in panels onto a cereal packet card base.  I used PVA at first, but the shiny surface of the game box didn't stick well, so I swapped to UHU which worked fine.

Window mesh.

I used some fabric embroidery mesh for the clerestory windows round the back of the garage.  It's much easier to cut than the plastic sort and glues easily with PVA.

Sunshine through the windows...

  I like the effect from this mesh, especially when it is set diagonally.

Cement render texture.

Once the glue in the initial assembly had dried, I painted the entire outside with PVA, then sifted powdered wall filler (or spackle in the US) over it using a tea strainer.  I would have preferred to use white tile grout but unfortunately the filler was all that I could find.

Office.

 This gives a very effective rendered look.  It needs to be done very carefully (don't breathe in the dust!) and I took the model outside afterwards and blew the excess dust away rather than risk it ending up all over the house.

Side wall.

Some PVA was heavily diluted and a few drops of washing up liquid added to produce a milky liquid with very low surface tension.  This can be dropped onto the surface of the model, where the surfactant washing up liquid allows it to soak in quickly without leaving any brush marks.

A nice bit of blue.

After the walls had been left to dry overnight, I mixed up some pale blue paint.  On a large surface like these walls, you can afford to use something paler than you might on a figure.

Base coat completed.

  All the outside walls were given a thin coat of the blue paint.  The PVA/filler mix takes the paint very well.

Back wall.

I painted the window mesh too, this is supposed to be wood or something similar, not metal grating.

Paint & acrylic caulk.

 The empty patch of ground at the side of the garage needed some texture.  I mixed a bit of burnt umber acrylic with some white acrylic decorator's caulk, this makes a good mixture to use, very sticky and dries rubbery, and you can press shapes into it when it is partly dried.  I buy brown caulk if I can find it, but the current tube that's open just happened to be white because I'd been doing some DIY recently.

Freshly applied mud.

I gave the ground a good coating and sculpted in a slight hummock to one side.

Tyre tracks.

Toy car wheels were rolled across it when it was partly dry, to leave some interesting tyre tracks.

Adding tyre tracks.

The tracks won't match the vehicle I put on there, but the general effect is pretty good.

The sole of a boot.

It's hard to see, but I also carved the end of a scrap of sprue into a tiny footprint that I could press into the semi-cured caulk.

Footprints.

I made some trails of footprints across the patch of waste ground at the side of the garage.

Footprints and tyre treads.

I tried to make the footprints look like they had a purpose, going to specific places and a cluster of them where someone will be getting in/out of a vehicle.

Set dressing.

 Some 3D printed oil drums (colour scheme inspired by a few African pictures I've seen) and a crate will add some interest round the back of the model, plus a couple of used matchsticks.  The latter just have a wash of Army Painter "Strong Tone" to bring out the texture of the wood.  Weathering included a light drybrush of earth/sandy colours and some burnt umber/red oxide/burnt sienna craft paint rust, dabbed on with a small scrap of sponge.

The finished special objective model.

 The completed model, with a few bases of troops for scale.  I added a red stripe around the base of the building, then fine sand/brown tile grout and some static grass over the base.

The garage.

The garage doors are some yellow corrugated card from some of craft box that has been in my modelling stash for probably 15+ years.  I put a wash of watered down Army Painter soft tone into the corrugations to enhance the texture and glued them behind the door openings.

Weathering.

The building was weathered with a gentle drybrush of sandy colour and a few streaks of Army Painter strong, soft and camo (greenish) tones.

Posters.

 I glued on the garage sign and a few posters made from 1980's fuel and mechanical signage found online, re-scaled and laser printed.  I only have a black and white printer, so I hand-coloured them with some model acrylics. I'm really pleased how good they look from 6+ inches away.

Capri.

The garage needed something more in it, so I painted a mis-cast Ford Capri picked up from Kore at the Diceni games show last year.  I went for a Professionals inspired gold colour.

In for a service.

The garage floor is a mix of filler, grey paint and PVA.  A few spots of ink were flicked onto it to create oily stains.

Garage door detail.

The posters were carefully cut out with a craft knife, glued in place with thick PVA, then overpainted with some thinned PVA to really seal them on.

Roof needs a bit of a tidy.

The rest of the roof sections were painted in a variety of greys and roughly overbrushed with some red oxide and a bit of burnt sienna for a rusty finish.  The office and lean-to roof had some grass added along the wall side where moisture would gather.

Oil store.

The oil drums, crate and matchsticks were glued under the lean-to in a space I'd kept clear of ground cover.  Once in place, I added some sand around the base and a bit more static grass.

Old tyres.

A 3D printed tyre stack was positioned down the side of the building.  I glued some longer (6mm) grass in and around some of the tyres, more of the short grass (4mm) and a few home-made spongy plants on to complete the ground cover.

Toyota Hilux poster.

Window sills for the office are small pieces of coffee stirrer with a wash of Army Painter strong tone.  A couple of the posters I searched for were Toyota Hilux adverts - everyone's favourite technical!

Pickup truck.

 The pickup truck is also a 3D print, with more 3D printed bits in the back, a couple of wheels and an oil drum.

The little footprints I put in have mostly disappeared, but overall the garage turned out better than I had hoped, so I'm very pleased.