Once again, I’ve chosen MiniArt’s 1/35 diorama series for my conversion project. Like the other kits in this line, the walls and base are thin vacuformed styrene. The air ductwork is also vacuformed in halves, like the walls. This requires a lot of putty-work to clean up the gaps as usual, so I do not recommend this kit to beginner modelers. However, despite the extra modeling work required for these kits, the results can be very rewarding. I used half a tube of Squadron Green Putty on this kit, and the putty and sanding took longer on the ductwork than the walls.

As in my previous reviews, I’ve changed the scale to fit the heroic 28mm scale of the Warhammer 40,000 Sci-Fi universe. It is an Authoritarian empire of mankind besieged on all sides in a grim, dark future of endless war. This little bit of fluff should explain why I chose to add brass-etched aquilas, a bulkhead door cut from a Games Workshop wall panel, and industrial windows from quarter-inch chicken-wire, and scratchbuilt extra details like the platform supports and destroyed extensions to the ductwork from styrene. I didn’t like how the ductwork kit parts had closed ends, but this was just a personal design choice. The inside ruined stairs were built from spare parts from the kit supplemented with some styrene shapes I had to match. I added the top ruined floor section from styrene to give the piece more usefulness on a Warhammer 40,000 gameboard as a sniper nest. The hollow base was reinforced with a solid ¼” hardboard piece cut to fit. Rubble is a mix of cork chunks, MDF bricks, railroad ballast, and styrene and chicken wire offcuts.

Painting was done exclusively with my Badger Sotar 2020 airbrush, using Vallejo Acrylics, Did’s Magic inks, and a #2 pencil for metal highlighting. I always enjoy building these MiniArt kits, and this one was no exception.

A very special thanks to MRC and IPMS-USA for providing the sample kit.