15mm buildings from salute 2012

I thought I would put together a post about the terrain pieces I purchased at the Salute 2012 show in London This April.

I love wargaming, for years I pretty much exclusively played games workshop games, but a few years ago I decided to branch out and look for other games systems. The thing that really caught my eye was Flames of war. A World War 2 15mm wargame made by Battlefront Miniatures. The thing that First drew me to the game was the terrain. I was so used to playing on pretty much a barren surface, with 3-4 buildings made from pringles tubes, yogurt pots and the odd games workshop building on it. That used to be fine, until I saw a FoW gaming table. It honestly blew me away. I had been living in my own little bubble for years, blindly thinking that “my” game was *best* and it didnt get any better than that. Oh how wrong I was.

I’m so happy to be able to say I came to that conclusion! The FoW game I first saw was at my local wargames club (find their website HERE), and to be honest, the table wasn’t even that great, but It still looked stunning compared to the wasteland tables that are 40k tables.

Now, to be fair to 40k, if you go to any Games workshop store and look at the gaming tables they will always look fantastic, but, they’ve spent many many man hours on those tables, people who work in the shop getting paid to make terrain, and they use all the fancy GW produced buildings and pretty much have an unlimited budget as long as they don’t go silly. So they look brilliant. But you average “home” player’s 40k table will probably only have a couple of GW buildings on it, and it’ll look pretty barren.

By contrast, Flames of war tables are usually COVERED with terrain. I personally play mainly late war, Normandy type games, set in France in mid 1944, after the allied invasion. These tables will be full of fields, bocage hedgerows, buildings, roads and rivers.
At 15mm scale you have much more freedom to put a lot more terrain on the table, as the area covered geographically is much larger than if you were playing in 28mm scale like 40k is. Another great thing that you can order gabapentin online or about 15mm scale is that the terrain is usually cheaper than 28mm scale. Because it’s smaller! This means you can get a lot more terrain for the same amount of money. More terrain means more variation between games, and more stuff on your gaming table!

So. What did I buy? well. I bought a few things. I mainly bought buildings. Thats what my terrain collection is lacking at the moment. I have plenty of bocage hedges, rivers and some roads (im currently making more roads at the moment! more on that in a later post!)

Here are a few photos of what I bought! along with my feelings about these purchases.

"american" set by battlezone scenics

This first Set was an “American” set of buildings which I bought from some unknown seller on a small stall, he had no point of sale up to say who he was, only a load of terrain. I got a bit excited when I saw the PRice of £9 and I bought the set. £9 for 3 buildings! wow! thats a great deal!
Yeah, probably would have been a great deal if they weren’t shit.

These models come from “Battlezone Scenics” I have to saw that when I got these buildings home, I was eagre to see what they looked like, even in the clear plastic bag they weren’t exactly clear, with the resin dust fogging up the bag a little, and the excitement of the show clouding my judgement. I have to say these buildings are a real disapointment.
They were marked very clearly as “15mm”, now, I’m not an expert. But I’m pretty sure that 15mm scale means that an “average” 15mm human model, in the standing position will measure 15mm, from his feet to eye level. This gives you an Average height of about 6′ being 15mm. The overall height of a 15mm model should then be 18mm tall.
When I measured a selection of my 15mm models from battlefront, Plastic soldier company and peter pig, I found that they were all between around 17mm tall to 20mm tall. This was pretty standard after some research done online.

So, you would think that a 15mm building, designed to be a representation of what an 18mm tall figure might live in would measure up to that? yeah? no. wrong. Don’t get me wrong, I mean, there are buildings of all shapes and sizes everywhere round the world. and Yes, I bought an “american” set, but I thought they looked alright, and would do for my rural games. But seriously, the doors on these buildings are about half the size of my troops.
They are tiny. Nowhere near big enough to fit in 15mm miniatures. The 15mm troops look like giants next to them. I unfortunately don’t own any 6mm troops to see if they match up, and that the buildings are just mislabelled. I hope thats the case. but I doubt it.

One of them doesnt even stand up straight! it leans over to one side, the barn building looks like its bloated in the middle. The detail on all three is OK, but it’s nothing special. From a distance these buildings will probably look pretty nice when they are painted up.But the good points are way overshaddowed by the fact they are really way too small. Overall I am pretty disapointed with these minis.

I’ll still paint them up, and use them in larger games where I just want something to put down on the table, but they’ll definately be my “back up” buildings, and I doubt i’ll ever look at another Battlezone scenics model again.

here is a couple more photos of the buildings close up so you can see them a little better.

leaning tower of buildingness

Best out of the three. its just way too small

the bloaty barn

The next purchase I made was a bridge, I really like bridges, it comes from my time in the royal engineers, I used to love combat bridging, its now rubbing off onto my wargaming! I bought this bridge from the plastic soldier company, cost me £5.50. I beleive it comes from the “mainly military” range. But I could be very wrong here. So. Here it is. The bridge!

Bridge

For £5.50 its a pretty nice bridge.
It has a pretty good level of detail to it, the parts are solid (it came in three parts), however there is no detail on the “inside” edges of the bridge, I found this to be a little strange, as these parts are not hidden. So why not detail them? Anyway, it’ll sit nicely over my river sections, and for £5.50 I’m pretty pleased with it. It’ll be a doddle to paint too.

For scale purposes, here’s some posing paras to let you see how big it is.

paras on a bridge

This next building was my personal favourite. I bought it from a company called “milicast” I honestly do not know whether they made this, or just sell it. But that’s who I bought it from. This isn’t strictly speaking a proper wargames terrain piece, as it is only half a building! it was designed to be sold as part of a diorama set for 1/76 scale tank models, where you place this building on the edge of the base, only seeing the front. I just loved it though, so I thought I would buy it and try and build up the back side of the building and make it a bombed out shell. it cost me about £11ish. I cant remember exactly. but I was pretty pleased with the purchase. The level of detail is superb

milicast building

I’m going to do another post on how I put this building together, but for now, here is the finished building from the back view.

constructed

I’d like to point out that I was a bit confused with this building’s scale too. it was supposed to be 1/76 (15mm scale is sold as 1:100, but is actually closer to 1:107), when i measured the door (i usually base the scale on a normal sized building by the height of it’s door. Windows can vary in size, but a door should be proportional to a human, unless its something like a church where the door could be huge).
the door on this model is 24mm tall. Thats a SMIDGEN too big, but really, It looks like it fits perfectly from anything more than 20cm away (and you arent holding a ruler up to it). This mini was sold as being 1/76 scale, but, as far as i can see, it’s really close to what I think a “true” 15mm building should be. When comparing the scales to other buildings, and to measurements of my own house, its pretty much spot on as a 15mm building. But. It’s sold as 1/76.. *sigh* oh well. at least it looks awesome!

The following two pictures are two ruin buildings by Kerr and king. They were very cheap, I cant remember the price exactly, but I think they were around £6 each I was very pleased with this price.

kerr and king ruins

kerr and king ruins

These minis have a great level of detail, I don’t think they were intended to be used on a normandy table, probably a stalingrad type one, but to be honest, I’m not really bothered. They look really cool. So I’m gonna use them! There are no doors in either of these buildings, so it’s hard to judge the scale, but the brickwork is about the same size as the close to perfect 1/76 scale model, and they are about the same height. So I think on a table together, they will look really good. The only thing I don’t like is that the windows seem a little small for my liking. But really that’s just me being picky. There is nothing wrong with these minis. They are great. Especially for the price.

One Thing I would also like to point out about kerr and king minis too, I have a few of their basing sets, and everyone I know who plays 15mm ww2 loves the basing sets, they are very high quality. But I’ve always stayed clear of their buildings, because the pictures on their website make them out to be a bit ropey. I have honestly NOT purchased kerr and king terrain in the past because I thought the quality of the models was very low. After seeing them “in the flesh” however, I have MOST DEFINITELY revised that statement! WOW they are superb!! There is a whole range of buildings that, unsurprisingly, had totally sold out by the time I found the kerr and king stand at Salute, the guy only had the painted example models left. I’m most definitely going to be putting in an order soon, as they were hands down the BEST quality 15mm wargames terrain that I have seen so far. The pictures on their website really do not do them justice! Highly recommend the kerr and king stuff!!

Well, that’s all the terrain I purchased while I was at Salute, I hope you’ve seen something you like! Thanks for reading my blog, please comment and pass on this post to others who might like it.

Chris.