To put my money where my mouth is I bought a Sand series combo, just the thing for the Ork airfield table I'm building, perfect timing or what?
The scenery comes in a flat post-pack, sheets of pre-cut MDF, plastic wrapped with a set of instructions. I ordered on Thursday, it was on my doorstep on Friday. Here's what the bits look like on the A4 sheet:
The instructions recommend cutting the pieces out with clippers, I found it much neater to use a sharp blade and clean any lumps with a large file. Here are the bits for one building:
Instructions for assembly are clear, a dry run is a great idea as some walls are overhang and some are flush, it's best to get it the right way around before you put the glue on.
Assembly is easy, so easy that I put a heap together before I remembered I was trying to do step by step photos!
These thing fit together beautifully, the tabs fit tightly into the holes and everthing lines up so walls are flush. I was impatient, as usual, and didn't wait for each step to dry before starting the next. The only complication from this was getting the bottom joins flush, all the tabs are at the top so that's taken care of, just ensure everything is flush at the bottom after assembling all the bits.
The miniature scenery website has a great page on painting and detailing the buildings, I got a sample pot of Dulux Suede, just 'cos they didn't have the Sandswept as recommended on the website, for $8, it's half gone on two coats on three buildings.
When the textured paint was dry I gave it a quick drybrush with white, then detailed the 'wood' with scorched brown and a drybrush of snakebite leather, and some more snakebite for the corners and bottom edges to dirty it up a bit.
Three buildings took maybe 90 mins with extra for drying time, cost ~$12 each including paint and they look fantastic. The multi level design and the stairs make these buildings great, they are asymetrical so even with lots of buildings just turning them 90 degrees will ensure there is little repetition. I would love to see an entire 6' x 4' table covered with these buildings for an Ork city, close together they form great alleyways. The Ork village is an obvious choice but I also think a multilevel table with brilliant whites and blues would make for wargaming on the greek islands.
Final pics of my 2nd ed Goffs at home, now I just need to make the rest of the table look as good:
Final rating
out of 3!
Steve
A quick note from scientist Steve - I hate MDF, best stuff for making models, but the dust is a low-level carcinogen, most places (like Bunnings) are not allowed to cut it for you anymore. What could be better than someone else cutting evertything to size for you? As long as they are protecting themselves everybody wins. There is a small amount of dust created cutting the bits out and cleaning the edges, just remember to clean it up with a wet cloth so it doesn't hang around your work area.
