15mm Flames of War Battlefield in a Box – Small Desert Houses, Large Desert House, Ruined Desert Houses, Ruined Large Desert House – Weathered & Repainted (BB216, BB222, BB230, BB231)

15mm Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - Small Desert Houses, Large Desert House, Ruined Desert Houses, Ruined Large Desert House - Weathered & Repainted (BB216, BB222, BB230, BB231)

Another post of weathered and repainted desert buildings today. As you can see from the title, I’ve stacked models from four different sets into the one post to save “space” and time – and to get through this stuff a little faster while leaving the reviews to their own posts. If this stuff isn’t your bag – completely understandable – just skip over and wait for the “normal” model stuff that’ll be coming along soon enough.

15mm Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - Small Desert Houses, Ruined Desert Houses, - Weathered & Repainted (BB222, BB230)

First up, we’ve got the final small building of the Ruined Desert Houses set alongside the smaller of the buildings from the Small Desert Houses. A bit of lower-building dirt, some blackening around the damage and some rain streaking.

15mm Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - Small Desert Houses, Ruined Desert Houses, - Weathered & Repainted (BB222, BB230)

15mm Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - Small Desert Houses, Ruined Desert Houses, - Weathered & Repainted (BB222, BB230)

The insides upgraded from the usual plain black interiors that they ship with. Even though you won’t see these as much as the exteriors, doing this is also kind of the largest “upgrade” on a lot of these buildings…

15mm Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - Small Desert Houses - Weathered & Repainted (BB222)

15mm Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - Small Desert Houses - Weathered & Repainted (BB222)

15mm Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - Small Desert Houses - Weathered & Repainted (BB222)

Next up we have the medium building, a twin building essentially. Again, upgrading the interior is where most of the work was here.

15mm Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - Large Desert House - Weathered & Repainted (BB216)

15mm Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - Large Desert House - Weathered & Repainted (BB216)

15mm Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - Large Desert House - Weathered & Repainted (BB216)

Now we have the Large Desert House. I do want to pick up another one of these in the near future as one of the final parts of my little desert town. Same deal here, a little dirt around the base, dirt tracked on and up the stairs and then the interiors painted.

15mm Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - Ruined Large Desert House - Weathered & Repainted (BB231)

15mm Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - Ruined Large Desert House - Weathered & Repainted (BB231)

15mm Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - Ruined Large Desert House - Weathered & Repainted (BB231)

15mm Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - Ruined Large Desert House - Weathered & Repainted (BB231)

Another Ruined Large Desert House – yes, I bought a second one of these. I painted the blast damage a little differently just so the buildings won’t look like complete clones of one another (which they actually are, when you think about it!) and will just orient them differently on the table and not too closely alongside one another. With all of this done a couple of days ago, I’m well and truly on my way to having all of my currently-owned desert buildings weathered and repainted before the end of 2021…

15mm Flames of War Battlefield in a Box – Ruined Desert Houses, Ruined Large Desert House – Weathered & Repainted (BB230, BB231)

Flames of War Battlefield in a Box – Ruined Desert Houses (Gale Force Nine BB230)

As I’ve constantly been alluding to in my recent reviews of the many prepainted Gale Force 9/Battlefield in a Box/Flames of War terrain pieces, it wouldn’t take much to really upgrade them from the stock out-of-the-box and really elevate them. As I’m sure you guessed by now – and I’m sure a lot of you saw this coming –  that’s what I’ve been doing with many of the pieces (and will likely do to most all of them in some manner eventually).

Flames of War Battlefield in a Box – Ruined Desert Houses (Gale Force Nine BB230)

I started on doing this with the Ruined Desert Houses set last month almost immediately after getting a second set, and it wasn’t until the last minute when I decided to leave one of the buildings untouched so I could do a direct “before” model next to the “after” ones. So this heavily damaged house ended up with both of them weathered. I guess given the state of the walls I could have gone with a lot more interior blackening and scorching, but I reckon they still look decent enough. Or should I go back and add more? What say you?

Flames of War Battlefield in a Box – Ruined Desert Houses (Gale Force Nine BB230)

Flames of War Battlefield in a Box – Ruined Desert Houses (Gale Force Nine BB230)

These next few images show the other buildings from the Ruined Desert Houses sets – you get two in each set, so I’ll have to go back and dirty up the one I left clean (on the left, as it happens!) soon, now that it’s use as a comparison piece is done! I’ve tried to give them an overall consistent look in terms of the colours, while varying the burn/scorch/etc marks a little. Again, to avoid them looking too much like cookie-cutter structures.

Flames of War Battlefield in a Box – Ruined Desert Houses (Gale Force Nine BB230)

Flames of War Battlefield in a Box – Ruined Desert Houses (Gale Force Nine BB230)

Flames of War Battlefield in a Box – Ruined Desert Houses (Gale Force Nine BB230)

Originally these models had their interiors painted black, even though there’s actually a little bit of sculpted detail there (again, see left). It didn’t take much effort to make them look a lot better inside by adding some colour, and then adding some wear patterns and picking out those details.

Flames of War Battlefield in a Box – Ruined Large Desert House (Gale Force Nine BB231)

The more interesting model of the ones I reworked was the Ruined Large Desert House. Again – I’ve purchased a second one and am using the newer one as the comparison pic (and will have to go back and weather/ruin that one now!)

Flames of War Battlefield in a Box – Ruined Large Desert House (Gale Force Nine BB231)

As can be seen, a bit of paint on the ruined exterior adds a bit more of a story to the piece than it had beforehand. Particularly on this angle!

Flames of War Battlefield in a Box – Ruined Large Desert House (Gale Force Nine BB231)

The landings also look a lot better once given a bit of weathering.

Flames of War Battlefield in a Box – Ruined Large Desert House (Gale Force Nine BB231)

I’ve given you three angles already, so why not the fourth?

Flames of War Battlefield in a Box – Ruined Large Desert House (Gale Force Nine BB231)

Here’s where it gets good, though. At least, where I’m happiest with them. Shout out to Kuribo on this pic (and the next) as I’d already done these when you made the comment about just using the outsides of these buildings – just had to bite my tongue and wait till I had these photographed and ready to post. 😀

Flames of War Battlefield in a Box – Ruined Large Desert House (Gale Force Nine BB231)

This one shows the difference between the two with troops added. it obviously doesn’t matter in terms of gameplay, but it improves the aesthetics, which is why I paint and play with toy soldiers. So… y’know

Anyway, I hope y’all enjoyed this little post. As I’ve said a bunch of times now, the BFIAB range is pretty nice for prepaints, but as I was opening them I felt that a little polishing could really make them shine. And it turns out, I was right! No surprise there, obviously! 😉