Tag Archives: Team Yankee

15mm Terrain Unboxing Review: Team Yankee Battlefield in a Box – Automobile Garages (BB167)

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Team Yankee Battlefield in a Box - Automobile Garages (BB167), 15mm, 1:100, 1/100 buildings, What a Tanker, Battlegroup, Team Yankee

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”….

Team Yankee Battlefield in a Box - Automobile Garages (BB167), 15mm, 1:100, 1/100 buildings, What a Tanker, Battlegroup, Team Yankee

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.

Team Yankee Battlefield in a Box - Automobile Garages (BB167), 15mm, 1:100, 1/100 buildings, What a Tanker, Battlegroup, Team Yankee

Inside, there’s two little garages.

Team Yankee Battlefield in a Box - Automobile Garages (BB167), 15mm, 1:100, 1/100 buildings, What a Tanker, Battlegroup, Team Yankee

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.

Team Yankee Battlefield in a Box - Automobile Garages (BB167), 15mm, 1:100, 1/100 buildings, What a Tanker, Battlegroup, Team Yankee

Similarly to the house extensions, the smaller of the two garages fits inside a standard FoW European building.

 

Team Yankee Battlefield in a Box - Automobile Garages (BB167), 15mm, 1:100, 1/100 buildings, What a Tanker, Battlegroup, Team Yankee

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?

15mm Terrain Unboxing Review: Flames of War Battlefield in a Box – House Extensions (BB167)

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Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - House Extensions (BB167), 15mm, 1:100, 1/100 buildings, What a Tanker, Battlegroup, Team Yankee

I still haven’t had the energy to photograph any new painted models, but the good news is that Marouda and I did manage to get a bunch of stuff cleaned out and consolidated – and I have been painting regularly and completing models. I’ll have photos of new stuff up by next weekend, so in the interim, I’ll have at least a couple more of these terrain reviews that I photographed months ago. This one follows on from all of those building sets, and is effectively an expansion pack for them.

Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - House Extensions (BB167), 15mm, 1:100, 1/100 buildings, What a Tanker, Battlegroup, Team Yankee

Inside the retail box, we have a blister tray, much like those from GW’s kits of yesteryear once they phased out the polystyrene trays…

Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - House Extensions (BB167), 15mm, 1:100, 1/100 buildings, What a Tanker, Battlegroup, Team Yankee

…and inside, you get this line-up of little building-ettes! And also a small monument.

Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - House Extensions (BB167), 15mm, 1:100, 1/100 buildings, What a Tanker, Battlegroup, Team Yankee

Instead of lining them up, we’ll go straight to the money shot so you can see how they work – simply butt them up against an existing building, and you’ve got a bit of added interest that also works well if you want to have these buildings set out with a little more distance rather than in a street row. They’re still pretty close together here, though that’s for the photo, though they really do make them into more convincing large detatched houses to my eye.

Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - House Extensions (BB167), 15mm, 1:100, 1/100 buildings, What a Tanker, Battlegroup, Team Yankee

And in a pretty sweet touch, when I was faffing about trying to figure out how I would store them, I found that they fit inside the larger buildings quite nicely.

Flames of War Battlefield in a Box - House Extensions (BB167), 15mm, 1:100, 1/100 buildings, What a Tanker, Battlegroup, Team Yankee

In fact, the entire set disappears inside the larger buildings that I already own without a problem. I do like this!

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 and matches specific parger buildings from the BFIAB range, though if you lack a certain building, repainting these little lean-tos would be a doddle. As with the full buildings, adding a little weathering/drybrushing will really make a difference on these, which I will do at some stage at the same time as the larger ones.

I really do like this set, and IF you already have a few of the full-sized buildings and want an aesthetic upgrade to them, I have no hesitation in recommending these as a purc

hase. If you want them to add to other buildings, for example 3-d printed ones, I think they’d also work pretty well, though at that point you’ll have to (re)paint them to match your prints, so that might lessen their value slightly. For me though, this was a set I saw on the storefront over the period of time when I was purchasing the larger houses, and had a “well, maybe one day, but I need actual buildings first, but I guess they could be alright” kind of attitude to them. Having gotten them I’m quite glad I picked them up, and they do go a long way so there’s also no need for a second set – which is also good in a lot of ways!