It’s been quite awhile since I did any of these, and I do have a few to catch up on – so today we’re looking at the Battlefield in a Box European Village Walls – a set I had been keeping an eye out for severla months before I finally found them for sale. BIAB’s supply is pretty spotty in general here in Australia, with things coming into and going out of stock in waves. As you can see, my walls came in highly attractive retail packaging, very reiminscent of GW’s “direct” white box packaging.
Inside, we’re back to the bubble wrap that I’ve seen so often with these sets.
After the initial bubble wrap, we find the individual components bundled by type in further rolls of bubble wrap. It may not be attractive, and may not be super-reusable for storage, but it certainly works to keep the terrain pieces safe up to the point of consumer unboxing.
And this is what you get in a set. Once again, it doesn’t look like a lot of money compared to what you can do with a 3D printer in 2024, but it does come painted and finished (and with clear resin in the fountain) and ready to simply drop onto the tabletop – so a lot of the value is right there – and that’s the value proposition that you as a consumer would need to decide on (depending on their price where you are).
Here’s the set of walls alongside a couple of Flames of War 15mm models for scale. You’re not getting any use out of these on a 40k table unless it’s just adding a bit more detail for the visual aesthetics.
I picked up two sets of these to give myself more tabletop flexibility. Purely by coincidence I found the container where they resided recently and added a little dusty/dirty weathering along the ground line of the pieces – a very low effort bit of work that nonetheless makes these walls look a little better. As I already had a mat out on the table, I staged a couple of photos, showing the two sets of walls in a slightly more realistic gaming environment than on the white table.
Destroyed Houses also from Battlefield in a Box, New Europe Just Fields Mat by Cigar Box Battle Mats, Flexible Dirt Roads by Fat Frank via eBay. I really need to write reviews of both of those when I get time. As per usual, all products in this review (including the mat and roads) were purchased by myself through normal retail channels.
Just for fun, here’s a 15mm mini’s-eye view of the walls, minis and terrain! And with that, I’ve completed another 20 pieces of not-very-significant terrain during Dave Stone’s annual Season of Scenery challenge.
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Great review mate, and as you say, price versus table ready is a decision we all have to make for ourselves. Clever addition of weathering to make them count for SOS ! LOL
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If I’m lucky I may even get something substantial finished for SOS!
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Look forward to seeing what else you come up with.
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That’s pretty cool! I know how small 15mm scale is, but seeing like that I just can’t help but say “It’s so tiny!!”.
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These walls go up to roughly a Primaris Marine’s shins (but not kneepads!)
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Nice work Az. Always good to have more terrain completed.
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Especially terrain that’s this easy to get table-ready!
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Having the option to buy something and save time working on terrain is pretty appealing to me and I would think a good chunk of the wargaming hobby. It doesn’t hurt when the terrain looks nice too!
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That’s actually so true – especially for someone like myself who can have their enthusiasm sapped hard by a painful, difficult or tedious build. Over the past few weekends I’ve been working on assembly and prep for two scenery kits that really come under the classification of “nice sculpt, awful kit.”
Both really should be in the “assemly in an hour or so, paint in a day” category but both instead took multiple days to assemble due to ill-fitting parts, mould lines needing to be cleaned, sub-assembly drying time and so on.
At this rate and with this level of enthusiasm assassination I could just as easily end up with one or neither finished by the end of this month instead of the both I’d hoped to have done…
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That’s describes my experiences perfectly. I got a new model on Thursday and it requires a lot of additional prep and the longer I work on that, the less enthused I am about painting the mini and I was pretty amped up to get started on it before that. I find that terrain can be even worse as there are more things that can go wrong in the process.
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In the end i got neither of them finished. I did get one of them fully assembled and primed awhile back, and the second one of them I’ve now added all I plan to the exterior and primed there, still with a lot left to do to the interior.
Hope you’re managing to get through the model – I’ve got a lot of catch-up to do (as usual). Though all this typing is making me sleepy… 😮
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