Wednesday 2 September 2015

'Laser Craft Art' a review of a 15mm scale MDF building for FoW.

With both of my Flames of War armies now about done, and with my painting desk clear for September, my thoughts now turn inevitably toward the building of terrain. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this recently as I try to think through just what I am looking for in this project as far as terrain goes. I have come down on the side of modular terrain rather than a more realistic 'model railway' type landscape, but I want to really work on the terrain pieces in order that everything ties together as much as possible. I'm keen to avoid those little fields that can hold a single tank model for example, and of course with no hexes to worry about I can really go to town on the terrain side so I'm going to enjoy myself with it.

So, first step for me was to establish a visual scale on the tabletop, Flames of War is described as a 'wysiwyg' game in the rules and line of sight is vital part of this. You will typically see FoW players crouching down at eye level  to the table each move to see what can be seen, I can't think of another game where you see this? If you can't see 'em, you can't shoot 'em! not directly at least.

You can see from the above that having say a small round hill half the height of a house is just not going to work as visual scale is important in the rules. So I'll begin by building up a small Normandy village and creating lots of bocage.

I'd looked at the ranges of MDF buildings for FoW and decided to go with Laser Craft Art as the roofs are etched with tile effect and the detail really stood out. I'm glad I did, as the product is of a very high standard indeed. I ordered a French village shop and it was posted with 24 hours, well packaged. I must say I was pretty impressed with the kit in flat form, high quality design and cutting. It took just a few minutes to push everything from the sheet and once I had it laid out I could not resist putting it together. PVA and a brush and the kit was put together in around 15 minutes. The result you see in the pics, that is the finished kit as it comes, for a price of £7.00 which compares well with resin buildings in this scale for example and is ideal for occupying with infantry, 2 bases per floor.

I will now be ordering an entire village worth of kits and they will be fully painted. These will set the visual scale for everything else, so large field patterns with bocage realistically tall, (earth bank topped with hedgerow that could conceal a Tiger!).

I would recommend these kits to anyone planning a FoW layout, easy to put together and designed for use with FoW bases.

Lasercraftart ww2 buildings.





2 comments:

  1. Hi Lee - I've been interested in these pre-cut, etched MDF buildings for a while, but haven't bought any - this is mostly because I have made cardboard buildings in the past, and they were usually a bit too square and straight-edged! Very interested to see how thede paint up - I haven't seen any done like that. Someone does an AWI blockhouse, which I thought could paint up for the Peninsular War, but - typically - I haven't done anything about it. This may prompt me to get on with it!

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