Bolt Action - Review: Warlord Games Ruined Farmhouse

General Review:

The Ruined Farmhouse from Warlord Games provides a pretty nice looking, modular building for your Bolt Action battles.  I am going to review this from two perspectives, so please take a look...

The house contains 23 pieces of plastic.  The plastic seems more of the standard toy plastic than anything I have really seen for miniature games.  There was a very significant ridge of flashing around each piece, which made cleaning the model up a bit of a hassle -- especially with 20+ pieces.  It took me about an hour to clean and assemble the model, having given up on a real good cleaning at about the 30 minute point.

The options provided in the pack are very good -- you can make any number of different configurations.  Unfortunately, there are no directions, so you will have to figure it all out from pictures on the box or on the web.  I created basically the same thing that is on the box and still had some leftover parts.  One good thing about the cleaning and assembly taking a long time was that I had enough time to figure out that I could do the setup on the box in two pieces, leaving me with some options for doing one large building or two small ones.

Rating for Modelers: 7/10

If modeling terrain is your thing, than this set is pretty cool.  There are plenty of pieces to make any number of configurations.  I could see getting a couple of these sets and making some nice modular buildings that would give your battlefield a different look each time.  The cornerstone pieces included conceal the joints in the wall very well - a novel idea.  The heavy flashing and assembly time were certainly drawbacks.  At USD$24, you can certainly afford to buy a couple of these sets.

Rating for Non-Modelers: 3/10

Full Disclosure:  I am NOT a willing Terrain Modeler.  For non-modelers, this set is a disaster.  There are no instructions, a million pieces, and a ton of cleanup required.  If you can struggle though, you will end up with a nice piece for an ok price.  For me, I would rather keep the 2-3 hours of assembly and painting and buy something else with less work.

Model provided by Warlord Games.