I recently became intrigue by the 1-48 Combat game and elected to pick up the Russian and German Starter kits, a couple of extra miniatures and the new 1/48th scale module buildings. At the time the buildings are what really interested me. Like many projects these received that first glance of very cool, and then set aside. This morning I pulled them out to take a good hard look at them.
First off overall these are great looking buildings. The resin holds detail great and there are very few imperfections in the castings. There are pictures of all the castings in the 1-48 Gallery (look for the tab at the top of the page).
First up is the Ruined Factory Office Block Module 1. This is a great little building. The castings are nice and crisp although there is a pretty big chunk of "sprue" to removed at the bottom of each piece. It comes with three walls and a floor piece. The mold line runs along the edges and is obvious enough that it will have to be removed.The walls really line up with the floor piece very well and will definitely add to the sturdiness of the building when its assembled. The windows are wide open on this casting and there are openings for doors but there are no doors provided. The website says that a doors and windows pack will be coming in the future but I'll go ahead and scratchbuild my own for now. This is a terrific little building but I would have like to have had four walls to work with.
Next is the Ruined Factory Office Block Module 2. This is the physically most impressive of the two buildings. Again the castings were great, although there is going to be a considerable amount of work to removed the "sprues", these run the full length of the bottom of piece and it will take a razor saw to remove them. Not a big deal with you are looking at the size of the castings but its going to require some attention to make sure you are not removing the bottom part of the building as you cut through it. Definitely cast in a two piece mold with the mold line running around the outside edges of the wall. Easily cleaned up but it does cross through a lot of brick detail so will require a little care to remove. Its a significant mold line so it will have to be removed. The two story side section on the buildings left was slightly warped. I'm not sure how to approach this yet. Pressing fitting it together showed that I could exert enough pressure to get it to straighten out. I may take a hair dryer and heat it up and see if I can remove the warp that way or pin it and use epoxy and clamps to get it into place. This was the only piece that was warped. The building details don't quite match up at the corners, a little irritating for me as I intend to use it for a diorama so its going to take some extra work. All the ground floor windows and doors are closed. Opening them up is going to take some serious effort because of the thickness of the resin. If you are using it for a gaming terrain piece its just fine the way it is. The building fits together well and its definitely sturdy. I am a bit confused that you can create a room that you have no access to if you glue the back wall into place and use the full width of the floor piece for the second floor. It also would have been nice if they building came with a floor like the first module did. Still I like this piece and it has definite conversion possibilities. Major surgery isn't going to be easy with the thickness of the resin for this one so plan ahead and make your cuts count.
Baueda calls these modules, and you can certainly get several of each and put them next to each other and they will look like they should be next to each other or part of the same building. It would be nice if the door and window set had been released with these buildings. They are the first 1/48th scale buildings I have purchased and I won't hesitate to purchase a few more of these modules in the future. I'm also looking forward to future releases in the series.
