Here’s the next bit of scenery on the Battlefield in a Box review train – Automotive Garages, this time under the Team Yankee (now World War III) banner – they should really have a better, more unique name for the rebranding of TY than “World War III”….
Once again inside the retail box, we have a blister tray. It’s just occured to me that these smaller trays are the same as the ones found in many of Battlefront’s Resin/Metal FoW vehicle sets.
Inside, there’s two little garages.
Once again, I’ve just thrown them alongside a couple of buildings so you can see how they look. I’ve also got House Extensions butted up against the buildings in these pics, so we can see the full effect. I didn’t take a pic, but you can place a small infantry base on the single garage, and a medium base on top of the larger garage.
Similarly to the house extensions, the smaller of the two garages fits inside a standard FoW European building.
The larger garage, on the other hand is just a bit too big. I’ll share my solution to this problem with a later review. In the meantime, you can see how I choose to store the regular buildings. Sistema tubs to the rescue!
As always, I purchased this set from a retailer with my own moneys and have no incentive to say anything good, bad or ugly about it. These garages are about as basic as things get, in a lot of ways similar to the desert terrain that was a lot simpler than the European buildings I’ve been sharing here in the more recent posts. This set has a lot less positive going for it compared to many of the others – the fact that it’s “open box and place” is about it for the positives, I guess it looks alright as well. The negatives are the cost (not expensive, but not cheap either!) and the fact that something this simple really veers hard into something that would be reeeeally simple to build yourself with some foam core (or just card!), PVA and an hour or so to do it carefully.
And now I have a question for YOU, dear reader. Obviously these will work in any game set from the 1950’s through to the modern day, but did garages of this type exist in any in the Europe of the early-mid 1940’s, and if so were they common enough to “fit in” on one of our standard semi-rural wargame tables?
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Great review mate, and a nice generic piece that could have a lot of uses
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Thanks Dave!
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More nice pieces! 🙂 Interesting question about the garages! I’d have probably said no and that they would have had single or double slope roofs in wood or corrugated iron, but that’s a guess really. If you try and have a look at some 1930s/40s/50s railway layouts online you might get a better idea.
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Thanks John, interesting points and something I’ll certainly remember when I eventually build a few more of my own. 🙂
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Look great mate, and a pretty basic thing that could/should look fine in a 40s setting
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Cheers Alex. From what I’m thinking they’ll be a little anachronistic but will still be okay on a table at home.
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Yes, really basic accessories: in this case it might be worth taking a few hours to build them yourself.
As for the final question, we would say no at least for Italy, neither in the countryside nor in the city. They will begin to be built after WWII, starting in the 1950s. Also for this reason, building them yourself would create less anachronistic garages; but in this case too the modeller’s scruples risk overwhelming the player’s needs …
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Yep, that’s the value that I hope to offer with these reviews. Some of these terrain items have a fair bit to them in terms of if you were going to try and create your own, while it seems that this one would be easily duplicated or even bettered without too much work.
As I mentioned to Alex, I’m sure I’ll end up shoveling these two small pieces into some of my WWII tables for that player convenience, but then I’m unlikely to buy too many more of these, even for modern settings if they’re easily scratch built when I have a bit of time to do so – and in that case, I’ll do some more period-appropriate versions as John suggested.
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Its funny but I hadn’t really thought about having a garage as terrain but in anything remotely modern, you really should have some garages, especially in the US where a good portion of houses have at least a one car garage. I don’t think many people in the US had garages until after WWII though so I suspect that these would equally uncommon in Europe though this is just a guess on my part. I think you may have to do some research to be sure on this one.
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Yeah, between integrated garages or even just car ports, most suburban places around have either the one or the other, particularly more modern homes. I think research for this little pair of boxes is more work that I’m willing to do, though! I’ll just build some more “appropriate” ones as John suggests down the line rather than buying additional of these sets.
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Nice review and a nice product too by the looks of it, as for if they would fit WW2 I’d personally say no, they look later to me, as said above, tin or slate/tiled rooves and wooden barn style doors, just look more authentic.
Cheers Roger.
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Thanks Roger – that’s very muchj in line with what John said above, so I’m happy to take your combined advice if it comes to mroe of these, so they’d be custom builds. These ones may well still sneak onto a 15mm WWII table or two in the meantime, though… 😉
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They look great- useful bits.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thanks Pete – something to add a little more life to some of the buildings at least!
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Looks great. Your reviews have been excellent and have lov ed the painting tips and advice.
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Thanks mate! I’ve still got heaps of these to go as well. If I hadn’t been under the weather, I could have pumped out a bunch more of these over the last week!
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