I saw
WARMILL for the first time at Colours. They have an interesting range of Laser cut buildings, terrain and accessories
As an experiment I bought a
Portable Utility Pod, a single small building on legs. They offer a range of options, with multiple pods, walkways etc.
The kit came in a flat cardboard box (looks rugged enough to cope with most posties material science testing experiments).
I had started to remove the pieces from the sprue before deciding to take the photograph, all pieces were securely on their sprues.
The kit is made from 3mm laser cut MDF. As a size comparison, that is about the width of a new Crooked Dice Armed Minion's head excluding ears (say about 200mm or eight inches). The Sarissa City Block buildings seem to be a similar thickness, though the habitation pods and the Old West buildings look more like 2mm.
Generally, the pieces came out without a problem, there was one sheet (the one with the side pieces) that did require the application of a scalpel as the laser cut had not made it all the way through the material.
I assembled the pod without glue, and with only a few minor areas that needed filing/sanding. For the final build I will tidy up the edges and use glue.
There are a lot of pieces, and the high density of pieces on the sheets is to be applauded.
This is a view of the 'assembled' pod with a Crooked Dice Tweedy for scale.
It was at this point that I noticed a problem. The door kept falling over. In the end I propped it up with a Time Lift Security with rifle figure.
I then checked the instructions again (the construction is so easy that there is a temptation to just build it). I was missing the two door hinges. As I mentioned before, there are a lot of strangely shaped pieces on the high density boards, so I went through the 'sprues' again, to no avail.
I was just contemplating either sticking the door in place, with the inner door detail added, when I noticed that the 'inner door detail' was cut through the 'inner door' piece, and looked remarkably like the missing hinges.
So, having added the hinges, here are some additional pictures.
Three Crooked Dice Armed Astronauts protect their field base though one of them is going to have to clean the back blast from that rocket launcher.)
Tweedy breaks out from the prison pod.
Tweedy says good bye to his confinement.
So, overall a nice easy build, a few areas which needed a bit of scalpel and file work, and a requirement to look at the instructions clearly (though a pointer to the hinges would be nice).
The building itself looks fine, it could do with some finer detail such as cabling and a replacement key pad (easily done by the builder).
The building is only single ended, it could do with an option to have two doors. It could also do with some inner detail (possibly as an option). As one of the pictures above show, it is eminently suited as a base for space operation, so it could do with an inner wall for an airlock.
The range could also do with some corridors to link them together where they are in use in hostile environments.
Would I buy more, yes, I will probably buy some more, with some of the additional gantries etc.
Now I need to take it all apart and finish and paint it.
