Architects of War: Garden Test Build

I was recently asked by Ernie, over at Architects of War, to do a test build of some of one of his new scenery products, "the Garden".  It's a nicely done kit that consists of a resin base, 8 castings for crops, a bucket, seed bag, hoe, and a scarecrow.  To the left is a picture of the finished product with some 28mm Perry French next to it for scale.  The kit also comes with a very nicely done instruction manual (7 pages) and a plastic pipette for applying diluted glue.

The quality of the resin casting was superb, I couldn't see any bubbles and just needed to trim some very minor flashing off one side - it required only two cuts of the Xacto knife to clean up.

The metal castings were nearly flash free - the only thing that needed to be cleaned up were the casting stringers at various points - I'm sure there is a better technical term for those!  I really like the scarecrow casting - it adds a nice but understated bit of whimsy to the piece.  The crop castings were also well done.  The crops in the garden are (from left to right in the middle and bottom pictures), a row of cabbages (cast in the resin), a row of tobacco, some carrots, a pumpkin vine and some zuchini.

The instruction manual was very well done and serves as a great tutorial for how to build scenery.  I picked up several dry-brushing techniques reading them.  It's rare to see a manual as informative as this one in any kit these days.

I think this type of scenery piece has some uses in skirmish gaming as an objective for marauders or forage parties to seize.  It can also serve as an "atmosphere setting" for larger, set-piece battles.  All-in-all, I really enjoyed assembling and painting up the garden and look forward to getting it on the table in the coming days.  I would recommend taking a look at the Architects of War website.