Always wanted a city block or two but nowhere to store it? I
may have found a solution for you with http://www.commission-figurines.co.uk
These buildings are laser cut from 3mm mdf in the main and
are of a modular design. Currently there are five base buildings available varying from £12 to £14 plus
individual walls. Also available are road sections in
various sizes. This review is for the “Berlin Strasse”. I will try and review
all the buildings and roads together when my collection is complete.
The base buildings are standard sizes at 20cm by 10cm (the
pavements add another 15mm) and unpainted. This makes buying the road system for
them fairly easy and also lends itself very well for changing the layout from
game to game.
The buildings all come flat packed and designed so that they
can be disassembled back to flat pack for storage. This means you have to make
a choice here. To glue or not to glue? Now that, is the question.
- If you do not glue then they can be painted and then only assembled when needed. At a guess, the whole of your 4’ by 4’ city would fit in a shoe box. I have not tried that yet so do not quote me on it!
- If you do glue, it will obviously take up more storage space but would allow for that extra bit of finishing around the corners (bit of green stuff or whatever and sanding would work a treat) and you will have the option to add your own custom interiors.
Construction is straight forward and tolerances are very good. They really do snap together and no glue required. I decided in the end to glue the pavement sections on to speed up ‘on site’ construction.
Quality is very good. As mentioned, the tolerances of the fit
are spot on. The only issue I had being one of the pavement sections not
being as tight as the others, but I found this to be a minor point once it was self-supporting
after construction. Detailing is really good with the exposed brickwork nicely
defined and easy to paint with a few quick coats of brown drybrush.
If I had to pick out any bad points it would be the lack of
interiors. I would like to see a future expansion of sundries that includes
some drop in interior walls and floors. A nice touch on the website would be if
you could buy a ‘city pack’ with one click.
Value for money is excellent to my eyes. For £100 you could
have approximately 6 square foot of really dense city scape including the
roads. Leave out the roads and add a few more buildings instead and for the
same cost you will be close to filling a 4’ by 4’ table if you have a mind to
spread the buildings out a little more.
A quick note on painting for the faint of heart. It took me me just short of an hour to paint this. Automotive grey primer base coat, dry brush the exposed bricks with 2 shades of brown, add the colour for the window frames/doors, rub in various dry pigments. Seal and the job's done.
