Urban Sprawl

I took delivery of some of Brigade Model's small scale scenery range last week.  They arrived within three days of ordering online which is a decent turn around time by anyone standards.  The items I bought were the Small English Churches, the Agricultural buildings set and the Normandy village set.   I choose these as they gave a range of buildings which span several centuries and can be happily used (with one or two exceptions) for 17th through to 20th century western Europe.

The Small English Church set



The castings were very crisp with good detail and a slightly granular surface texture which suggests that the masters might have been 3D printed.  It also helps with painting if you are using a dry brush technique as the surface texture helps grab the dry brushed paint.  There was minimal flash mainly from air channels I think, and not much in the way of visible mould  lines.  They did need a wash to remove the traces of mould release agent though.  Of the items I bought my favourites were the churches.  They all appear to be based on real English churches from the Sussex area.



Agricultural Buildings



Although the range is described as being 3mm it is fine for use alongside 2mm figures.  The doors scale to the right height and the building footprints are not excessive.  The ratio between height and foot print hasn't been adjusted as with some other ranges I have bought in the past for larger figure scales, so that the buildings proportions look correct rather than being over high for the size of the horizontal dimensions.

Normandy Village - 20th Century styles at the rear



The buildings paint up well.  I used the technique I use for 1/300th scale AFVs, as shown on the excellent Ritterkreig 6mm WW2 site.  Undercoat in white, add an ink wash to bring up the detail, block in the main colours, and dry brush for high lights.  I then pick out any detail like doors, windows and ridge lines and varnish.  One trick is to use contrasting tones between roof and walls to give definition.

 

I have posted images of two of the churches to give an idea of how well they paint up, remember these are both less than 4cm long!  The detail is far superior to the Irregular Miniatures buildings for this scale, so they will be my range of choice where they cover the structures I want.  Look out for them to feature in a game before too long.