Review - Battle Flag - 28mm Western Buildings - The Photographer's Studio and House

The Old West Photographer's Studio and House is the last of the three kits that arrived from Battle Flag earlier this week. I saved this one for last because it appeared, out of the box, to be the most complicated of the three kits. Especially since the General Store and  Saloon are essentially the same kit at least as far as construction is concerned. Having pretty much followed the assembly instructions on the first two kits I knew there were a couple of steps that I would be approaching differently. From my way of thinking they make the assembly just a bit easier to deal with. I built this one away from home last night and the lighting was not terrific but I managed to struggle through and got this one together in about and hour and half. The most difficult part was working on the second floor (yes, and I made a mistake here as well). Battle Flag recommends that all the pieces get painted first. I don't do paint first because some of my weathering techniques work better if I can apply them all it once. If you aren't going to get into heavy detailing and weathering then I would definitely paint everything first, it will save you a lot of time. You will have to be careful not to get glue all over the place.

First up is my picture of the contents of the package. Like the General Store, everything was already punched out of the frames and bagged up in zip-locks and marked for me as well. Although I kind of miss punching stuff out of the frames, this keeps the package smaller and lighter for shipping.

The instructions for the photographer's studio are specific to the kit, which I like a lot better. The General Store and the Saloon used the same instruction sheet and I just didn't like that. Like those kits the first piece to get built up is the roof. Construction was the same (lots of clamps!) and I got the gables on the correct ends (2 out of 3 not to bad).

After the roof I moved on to gluing all the door and window frames on. This one has a lot of windows so it was a bit time consuming. I did use a lot of clamps again. This step also included the little bit of extra trim that goes on the top of the facade. Very simple nothing like the more complex facade on the General Store. No problems here.

The next step is suppose to be assembling the front porch which includes gluing on the boardwalk to the front of the building. I have found it awkward to assemble the four walls together with the boardwalk attached like I did for the Saloon. So I opted to skip this step since there is nothing here that would hinder the assembly of something else. Instead I moved on to the base and glued on all the foundation support pieces. Again, take your time and make sure you have the pieces in the right place. This time I wasn't paying quite as much attention and during the dry fit stage I swapped the foundation pieces for the front and back steps. I noticed my error when I pulled the pieces back off to add the glue. The pieces that support the boardwalk only have detail on one side and the detail should be facing out, really it looks better that way.

With all of that out of the way it was time to assemble the walls onto the base. Again it is important to do a dry fitting and make sure you have the technique down. I think I have a better technique though, but I need to try it out before I wax poetic about it being superior. It is much easier to assemble without the boardwalk attached to the front. This step is getting easier each time I do it.

Now with all the walls together I built up the front porch. A pretty simple step, again remember that almost every piece as a front and back and you want the detail facing out. I didn't glue on the porch roof because it will interfere when I paint the building later on.

Time to go indoors. Like the other two buildings this one has a floating floor which requires some bracing to go along the inside walls. With a two story building you have to reach in farther so if you have big hands like me this can be a bit tricky. I followed up byh gluing down the floor, remember don't put glue on the edges! Now I'm trying to figure out how to get the supports in for the second floor at the right height. Well, Battle Flag thought of that and provided a nifty little piece that you can use to make sure all the second floor supports are at the right height. This made life much easier! Well, right up to the point when I realized that I reversed the locations of the two support for the back wall. Fortunately I figured it before the glue had really set and I was able to re-position them and get those pieces in the right spots.

At this point I popped the roof on to get that "complete" look and I was done.

This was another great kit from Battle Flag. I can't recommend these buildings enough and I'm definitely going to be picking up a few more. The only complaint I have at this point is the lack of interiors. However, Battle Flag did tell me that they have the first of their interior kits coming in November. They were talking about dollhouse quality furniture so I'm a little worried about the price point on these. As an alternative Frontline Wargaming makes a lot of resin castings for interiors that look pretty good. I'll probably buy a few of these to check out the quality and see how well they go with the Battle Flag buildings. I'm also looking forward to getting the buildings from Sarissa Precision and see how they compare. Sarissa has a line of adobe style buildings that look quite intriguing, but the first building I have coming from them is the Livery Stable, a very important building in western towns and one that's not available from Battle Flag.

Review - Battle Flag - 28mm Western Buildings - The Saloon

Tonight I took the General Store that I built last night and tried out my razor saw on it. I use the razor saw on plastic and wood pieces to create a deeper grain pattern and to roughen up smooth surfaces. Well it doesn't do much on MDF except create some fuzz. I'm may have the distressing step except that my paint work on this kind of depends on it. I tried just scoring the boards with the x-acto knife and I got more of a pattern but still managed to generate a bunch of fuzz. I'll have to mull over this technique. Without doing something the walls are just so smooth to represent weathered boards. This will probably only bother me.

Tonight I cracked open the Saloon. I picked this one because the assembly was basically the same as the General Store (its uses the same directions) and because I was able to avoid making the same mistakes I made on the General Store. This second building went together much easier, its a simpler design so there is not a lot of fussy around with the detail on the facade. Again an excellent little kit, so my opinion on the Battle Flag line continues to be a very good value for the money and I recommend them if you are building a western town, Still waiting for the Sarissa Precision order to arrive. I ordered a livery stable from them that I'm really looking forward to adding to the town of Calamity.

This building came on the frames, I had already punched some stuff out because I needed the frame to fix a mistake I made on the General store. Like most lasercut kits this stuff practically falls off the frames. There are little arrows etch in the scrap portion of the frame showing you were the attachment points to the frame are. I found that quite useful on the more delicate parts as I know exactly where to apply pressure. Nice feature!

Back to the roof. This time I made sure I had the end caps on the correct ends. The flat no detail piece on the end marked front because that sits behind the false front and the detailed end piece on the back. I was a little less clamp happy this time around.

Well that is until I got to building the front, then the clamps were back in force.

Here I'm following the directions and attaching the boardwalk to the front. From an ease of build perspective I think I would leave the boardwalk off until I assemble the whole building. Putting the four walls together without the extension of the boardwalk is a lot easier.

A side wall and the rear wall get their window frames and door frame.

A page from the instructions showing the window/door page as well as laying out the foundation for the boardwalk. On the boardwalk be sure you dry fit the pieces and make sure have them facing the right way. Detail needs to be facing out on the boardwalk and there must be room for two steps on the back of the building which is also notched to accept the backwall. You will be unhappy if you get this wrong and MDF is extremely difficult to pry apart after you have applied glue. You definitely need to get this right the first time. Fortunately I managed to pull off that feat again!

Everything is just about ready for the main "box" assembly. The boardwalk foundation pieces are still clamped down. I remembered to remove the clamps before I tried dry fitting the building together.

So a couple steps beyond the dryfitting. Walls assembled and glued together (you can see some glue I missed cleaning up) and the interior floor supports around in the inside edges are in place. These supports require a little attention because they are notched to fit together at the ends. So again pay attention to how you are putting them in place.

The floating floor is in and being weighted down to dry. Apply your glue to the bottom of the floor where it will rest on the supports. The fit inside the building is so tight that any glue on the edges will get scraped off against the walls when you set the floor in place.

Time for the stairs and the hitching posts.

Popping the roof into place to show off the finished structure.

A few scale shots with my posse of cowboys from Black Scorpion. You can tell these are older because they are in pewter and not resin! Again the Black Scorpion minis are a bit tall on their bases. That cowboy is going to lose his hat when he tries to go inside for a drink.

And now on the growing streets of Calimity. The Saloon and the General Store side by side.

I have one more Battle Flag building to go and hopefully I will get to that tonight. After that one is complete I'll start adding a bit of additional detail that will hopefully hide the interlocking sides a bit more and fix the rear gable of the general store so that its not a blank space. After that I can move on to getting them painted and weathered. Definitely pulling the airbrush out for these monsters!

Review - Battle Flag - 28mm Western Buildings - The General Store

This was a surprise package today as I wasn't expecting anything from Battle Flag to arrive yet. It was a pleasant surprise though. I'm going to be getting Wild West buildings from Battle Flag, Sarissa Precision and Gamecraft Miniatures. Battle Flag has obviously arrived, Sarissa is in transit somewhere and I'm still deciding what would be worthwhile to order from Gamecraft.

Since one of these companies is likely to get the bulk of my building orders after all is said and done I wanted to really sit down and document what's in the box and how well it went together. Since they were the first on the doorstep I'll take a look at Battle Flag's General Store.

Let's start off with the packaging.


















Nothing terribly exciting but nicely presented and I do like to be able to see all the parts. Of course the fun part is getting to spread the parts across your workbench. (Note these did not come with painted 15mm British Napoleonices, those guys just showed up complaining about having unfinished bases).

Now its off to the races. Following the instruction manual (well mostly). The roof is the first component that gets put together. You will notice that I do like my clamps and I highly recommend that you use clamps to assemble the building. I also use Titebond which is a carpenter's glue rather than regular PVA or white glue. My first mistake occurred in building the roof, I thought I read the directions thoroughly but I still managed to do this wrong. You can see what I did wrong at the end.

 Now, they do recommend that you paint your building first, but I'm ignoring that advice because of a couple of things that I want to do. Overall I would agree though painting some of these parts first while they are flat and easy to manage is probably the way to go. The next step involved putting together the front. This is a classic false front building. I made a mistake here as well, and I'm going to sort of hold the instructions accountable at this point, although I still should have figured it out on my own. The front goes together pretty easy. Its a little tricky at the end when you are putting the top piece of the facade together as there is no way to clamp it and you just hope to have your glue dry quickly. I suppose super glue might work here, but you better get the placement right the first time! My mistake clearly shows in the picture too, which means I had a hard time correcting it. When you glue MDF together and clamp it, getting it apart in one piece is almost impossible and I had to construct a replacement for one end of the facade because of it. So dry fit a couple of times and make sure you understand how something is suppose to go together before you apply the glue!

From here I moved onto the sides and rear, adding the door and window frames. I actually got this part of it right the first time. Lining the pieces up can be a bit tricky so just take your time and make sure everything remains neat and square.

Now it was time to work on the base. This building has a raised boardwalk (and hence a raised interior floor as well). I really like this feature and its one of the reasons I was attracted to the Battle Flag kits.

Overall not to difficult to put together. This time I double checked to make sure I had the right parts in the right place!

With that done it was time to move on towards the final assembly, bringing all those walls with inter-locking ends together. The instructions do recommend you dry fit this a couple of times to get a feel for the order you put the pieces together on the base. Basically start with one wall and work in one direction, either clockwise or counter-clockwise, whichever gets you done. I also glued the boardwalk in place and clamped that down to dry. Those are steel weights on the back. They are great for adding weight where I need it and they are dead square so I can use them to glue up walls and keep the corners of the building square. Today they just had to sit there.

Now it was time to put in the interior raised floor. There are some little pieces you add along the walls to raise up the floor. I got this in right the first time as well. I then applied glue to the bottom edge of the floor that would rest on these braces. Do not put glue along the edges! It seems like a good idea until you realize that with the tight fit you are going to scrape all the glue off along your walls and leave a mess to clean up. So only glue on the bottom. I of course add weight to hold it down since I couldn't clamp it.

I followed this up by adding the steps which pretty much completed the model at this point.

The building is complete now and its at this point that I realized I messed up the roof. Pay careful attention to your instructions. Here is a hint, the roof only goes on one way!

And now for a little size comparison. I found some Black Scorpion cowboys in the draw (who would have thought!) so I stuck them on their bases and took some candid shots. I think if they weren't on bases they would look just about right. They feel a little tall in these pictures though.

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From here I'll move on to the finish work. This building as built and if you just paint it straight up is going to look pretty darn new. Well, that's not happening in my Wild West! Tomorrow it has a date with a razor saw.

Now we get to my opinion (for what its worth, and I already have wooden nickles).

Instructions - They aren't awful but they are generic and are designed to cover a couple of different buildings. Although I know it costs more I would have preferred instructions geared specifically to this building. Some finishing instructions would be good too. Since I was able to follow them and get the thing built and looking good - 3 out of 5

Components - Quality wise the components are top notch!. Everything fit together pretty much exactly the way you would expect from a quality laser kit. 5 out of  5

I would recommend this little kit to anyone in need of wild west buildings for their games. It goes together fast (don't forget the clamps!) and really only gave me a bit of trouble. The instructions could be better. I'm disappointed that there is no interior detail on the walls (the floor is nice), especially since there is a back door and its not represented on the inside. I do realize that lasers only cut from one side and its probably not worth the trouble to flip it over and engrave the other side. Battle Flag has to make money at this after all. I would have also liked to see some interior walls though and there weren't any. If I can take the roof off during a game I expect to see a little bit more on the inside. I did ask Battle Front about this and they said that they would have some interior kits available beginning in November. I'm looking forward to that.

 I have two more buildings from Battle Flag to build and I'm looking forward to getting to work on them..