Deva 1/285 Buildings


At Cold Wars 94, a Canadian friend gave me a box of resin buildings that on close inspection, were nothing short of amazing! The samples included pillboxes of all sorts, several buildings and ruins, entrenchments, and even a petrochemical cracking tower. The entrenchments are the best I've seen in this scale. Log retaining walls, sandbags, and even (in one artillery position) stacked ammunition are all clearly detailed. The ruins include surrounding shell holes and rubble.

They look like ruins, not like normal buildings upon which someone went to work with a power drill. The pillboxes are easily on a par with C in C Soft Metal Castings emplacements and include Atlantic Wall emplacements, Japanese bunkers, and even Maginot Line casemates. I thought Id received most of Devas line until, looking in their catalog, I realized that they make well in excess of 150 different buildings and accessories, though, admittedly, they're not all 1/285 scale, but include 15mm and 20 mm items as well.

These buildings aren't cheap - a 3 by 35 bunker with removable top runs about $5.00, with prices per item ranging from around $3 up to $8 or $9. I don't know whether the catalog listed prices in $Canadian or $US, so unit prices could be a bit lower. For your money, though, you get some superb little buildings. I will paint mine not as scenery, but as models in their own rights. Well recommended. Try to patronize your local gameshop but, if, as I suspect, these gems havens got there yet, write to Deva Productions at 11964 Depatie, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H4J 1W5. - BILL RUTHERFORD

* The Courier uses the Tobey Barrett Measurement [BM] System to simplify comparison of figure sizes. The number is the height in millimeters from the bottom of the figure's foot (top of base) to its eyes. The letter refers to the "heft" of the figure: L=light, M=medium, and H=heavy. Thus, Hs will fit in with other Hs and some Ms, but not Ls.

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