Once again I’m posting another review of two more of the many, many almost-identical-but-ever-so-slightly-different houses from Battlefield in a Box’s prepainted range of European houses. We can call this the third in the trilogy, though I do have an epilogue to add to this little series a bit later. If you’ve read the previous reviews of the buildings in this range or if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll find that 90% of the text in this review is identical or near-identical to those two – again, that’s because these reviews are also very much for people who are looking for information on these sets, as when I was looking into them myself a few months ago there was very little actually out there and almost nothing in terms of images on what to expect – also why I’m keeping these to two kits per review as it’s easier to google.
Opening the boxes, we see that the actual resin buildings are wrapped in bubble wrap while there’s a square of cardboard that serves to reinforce the thin printed card of the outer “retail” box.
Like so…
This time, the two buildings are different sculpts to one another, both the actual buildings as well as the rooftop sections.
Again at the back side, the overall layout is the same on both as well as the previous once I’ve shown, even though the sculpts are different.
As always, the interiors are what I’ve come to expect from Battlefront at this stage – simply painted floors with entirely black walls without doors or windows picked out in any way. I’ll eventually get to repainting the interiors of these and weathering the outside, but that hasn’t been any kind of priority and as such – it’s something I’ll get around to doing when I get to it. As you can also see, each level fits two standard infantry bases inside.
But now we get to the interesting part of this review. I did pick up the Munich house as the last one of these as I wanted to try something different. So I got two of these. The plan with these was not to repaint one set to make it look unique as I’ve done with some of the other buildings, but to see how well it would work in making double-width (terraced-type) buildings, taller buildings and also smaller buildings.
Like so as a terrace-ish building.
And then like this. It doesn’t look so great in this form, though.
But then to make a bit more of it – this sort of thing, by stacking a third storey to one, running another as a single storey and swapping a rooftop across while integrating them both in with others. I think the idea worked well, though I’m also not really feeling like buying even more of these thigns to add additional single/triple-storey buildings. I’m happy with the one of them like this at the moment.
As always, I purchased these sets from a retailer with my own moneys and have no incentive to say anything good, bad or ugly about them. The painting on these is fine. It’s fit for purpose and as always, the biggest benefit of these is “Open box, put on table. Done!” In that, I really see zero problems. Adding a little weathering/drybrushing will really make a difference on these, which I will do at some stage. These double-storey buildings are a bit pricier than a lot of the others I’ve reviewed to date. If you have access to a 3D printer and have the time to spend printing and painting, you may want to instead go down that route instead, because buying a bunch of these to make a town will get pretty pricey pretty quickly, and there really isn’t a lot of difference between these two. They work for me, but as an objective review I have to give these a square thumbs in the middle, mostly due to their price.
If you want something that you can just unbox and drop straight onto the table, though – these still do very much have their place. While I feel like I’m no slouch when it comes to getting a decent number of models painted to a decent standard, I’ve also got a lot of models to paint, and these allow me to drop and play. I’ll likely repaint them when I have time, and even supplement them with some of the aforementioned 3d printed buildings in time, but as someone who started 15mm recently without any existing buildings in this scale, I’m ok with having purchased these – including the duplicated one. As pretty generic European-styled buildings, I’ll also be able to easily use them in different time periods aside from WWII, such as the more modern Team Yankee/WWIII setting for example.
Good stuff mate – you must have enough for a small town by now! 😁
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Chers Alex – that’s the plan. A small *wargaming* town, anyway – where it looks good but everything is scaled down so much that it works as long as you don’t stop to think about it! 😉
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Great review mate, do like your idea of the three storey building, and great the kit allows this.
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Thanks Dave – I do like that flexibility. I’m half tempted to pick up another duplicated bulding or two at some point, but too much other stuff to worry about first, so perhaps I’ll wait until I’ve had a few European theatre games and see how it goes…
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Single height houses look great, three high not so good – though slightly better with 2 high houses next to it. You do have the potential of mixing a large assortment of these houses now! When you get to the end of all these FoW buiidings, we MUST have a shot of everything (yes, ALL of them, houses, roads, fences, ruins) set up with some tanks & troops!
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Yeah, the triple storey ones really need some boubles next to them to “anchor” them. I’m hoping to get a couple of games in after the end of this week, so even though it’ll be desert table stuff to start with, you’re on as far as the photos go!
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Nice looking houses and being able to vary them so much has obviously been planned! 🙂 I’ve seen the same in MDF and resin unpainted scenery from other manufacturers as well!
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Cheers John! Agreed and they’ve done the same with some of their other sets as well – to be shared in some forthcoming reviews! 😉
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Nice- the line up of them makes for a decent street.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thanks Pete – it does look surprisingly decent to my eye as well!
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Hello, we know from experience that you are able to customize buildings to give them a different look from each other, but already varying the floors of the houses makes the appearance of a street or a block realistic. Perhaps it does not seem credible to combine three-storey houses (typical of a city) and one-storey houses (suitable in a small village) in the same street.
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Yeah, I do likethe idea of being able to vary the heights. I doubt I’d often have them with that height difference that close by, though on an actual table as it uses almost all of my available buildings in a tiny amount of table space – generally I think they’ll be spread apart much more which in turn will make it all look much more natural. (as long as you don’ t think too hard about all the obvious problems with wargaming terrain and scale!)
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Great purchase. You have quite a collection now.
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Thanks mate. Starting with basically no scale-specific terrain was a bit rough for the first game or two that we played with card scenery, but I’m sure you understand I couldn’t let *that* stand! 😉
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