DIRT CHEEP "KEEPS", "ANCIENT RUINS", "CASTLE RUINS", "STRONGHOLDS" AND "SIEGE" PRINTABLE TERRAIN SETS BY GARY M. WILLIAMS PUBLISHED BY MICROTACTIX http://www.microtactix.com It's all Peter Jackson's fault. There I was, a happy ex-figure wargamer who played a bit of computer wargaming from time to time and who was happy enough to use paper figures the few times that I needed a fix of big scale action. Then, in the merchandising wake of the Lord of the Rings movies came the Games Workshop table top game and my unreconstructed Tolkien fanboy personality took over. Here I am with a lot of unpainted and semi painted Orcs and stuff and the need to move them about the place, to re-enact Helm's Deep and the Battle of the Fords of Isen and to generally indulge my geeky self to the amusement of my wife. However, I lack suitable terrain pieces and the problem with good wargaming terrain is that it costs time, or money, or both, that I don't have and I started looking for a quick fix. Enter the "Dirt Cheep" range from Microtactix. These are print-out and build castles, earthworks and engines of war were exactly what I needed to create majestic landmarks for not much money at all. I knew that I could create at least as good a terrain piece as Weta for a fraction of the cost and that my Uruks and Rohirrim would be all the happier for it and after I made this declaration to my wife and she stopped laughing at me I at least admitted that I could make something serviceable that would look the part. My intention was that the "Ancient Ruins" would provide some of the scattered relics of Gondorian civilisation that adorn almost every traveling scene, the Castle of "Dirt Cheep Keeps" could assemble into Helm's Deep if enough sections were made and the Stronghold would make the ruder fortifications of Rohan and Dale. Each set is a provided in PDF format with instructions and components (some terrain pieces use multiple copies of a particular page) to print onto card (or paper and transfer to card or polystyrene) and assemble using white glue. In general the artists has made the maximum use of the space available to a Letter sized piece of card and this means that these are not terrain pieces for the very young or the clumsy. A sharp knife and straight-edge or, as I tended to use, small sharp scissors are required to get the pieces separated. In all cases it is wise either to only print out what you need or to label the sheets when they come off as the sheets have no marking as to what is on them, a bit of a drawback if you intend to do many at once but you soon learn to tell a wall section from a tower section. First the Problems Some sections, e.g. the crenellations on the towers or the battlements for the tops of walls can be tricky to hold in place whilst you glue the sections and you wish that you had few extra fingers if not another couple of hands but with practice you can get there. The main problem with the Stronghold and Siege sets is that since they represent timber constructions with struts rather than solid walls then to look right you will have to cut out all the white sections left between the beams. I cheated and used a pair of scissors jabbed into the white space and cut around but that leaves a ragged edge. The knife option leaves a good looking beam but is very time consuming. These sets aren't for kids, you are going to need sharp edges at some point, though I suppose an adult could cut them out and supervise children assembling of the less fiddly pieces. The scale is slightly small for 28mm figs, but this only makes a difference for the Stronghold, which has an inch wide gap between palisade and the building itself, and for the Siege Tower as it makes it hard to put figs into the tower platforms, but in all other ways the terrain pieces look great for 25/28mm scale figures, though it would be hard to put a multi-rank based unit on the tower walls, it better suits skirmish level gaming or one with single ranked bases for units. That aside the end result is very satisfying. Since the sections are as modular as possible you can create various designs, including approximating a curve with the keep walls, although only the earthenwork ditches/palisade are modular in the Stronghold set. The Stronghold of the title is one building and if you wanted to position units in them then you'd have to get creative. The siege engines (ballista, catapult and battering ram) are the trickiest to build but look effective enough. However at the end these sets cannot really be faulted. The attention to detail, such as interior surfaces in the siege tower or the back of the earth banks under the catwalks shows what care the creator of these terrain pieces has put into it and at the price they cannot be faulted. Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior # 146 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Solo Wargamers Association. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com