Hi all guest appearance here – I’m Chris!

Recently I have got my grubby hands on some 10mm MDF Terrain from Laser Cut Architect. I have been trying to find some decent 10mm terrain for ages for Spartan Games Firestorm: Planetfall in the dastardly hopes that a nice looking table to play on will sway Jimmi and John to stick with it. Most of the kits on the interwebs are of large skyscrapers and wot not, mostly I suspect to support Dropzone Commander. I wanted to move away from a city scene to a more outback environment, so I was very happy to stumble upon Laser Cut Architect from a post on Facebook. LCA are a relatively new company based in Chesterfield, UK which is conveniently close to where I live and they have made MDF terrain for many settings which now also includes Shadow War Armageddon but more importantly for me, a good range of 10mm non-city buildings.

Laser Cut Architect terrain all painted up

After a little look at the range, which isn’t huge so it was only a short look, I decided on picking up the reasonably priced Iron Gulch Bundle Kit (£27 for 6 Buildings, it is 2 copies of the starter kit with a saving of £3) and an Iron Gultch Diner. (£10 for the diner). I managed to dodge postage charges because L.C.A. have a collection option and as Chesterfield is pretty close I took up the offer. As luck would have it the supplier got in touch to say he would be at Chillcon and could pick it up there, Bingo!

The Iron Gulch set has a cool out of big city’s vibe to it which I really like and is going to fit right in as an backwater town in my “Out in the wastleland” collection of terrain I’m building. The buildings are all nicely tied together aesthetically and it reminds me a lot of a metal “Mos Eisley” buildings or future desert dwellings, square with flat roofs which for me is perfect. The diner is a great quirky additional building that I love and works well to breakup all the buildings. Out of the purchases I made I can make 7 separate buildings. I am going to base all of mine to stop them being easily moved during gaming and plan on have 6 separate bases about 6” x 6” each. As well as the buildings you get loads of added bits to dress the buildings with just take a look at the picture below to see the half the contents of the bundle.

The full set I bought

I am really pleased with how the diner has come out and I am looking forward to painting it up, which for me is a big deal as I bore easily. I have had the Starter kit pieces out and hope to most of it built for an upcoming game of Planetfall this week.

Construction was very easy and the diner set had an A5 sheet of instructions (the starter kit has instructions for the fan module, but lacks them for the buildings) but as most of the parts can be matched up with the part it joins to its not hard without instructions, then it’s just a case of gluing them in place. I was recommended by the supplier to use Gorilla Glue but a word of caution this glue expands to form a hard foam which did push apart the joins as you can probably see in the photos, it was probably because I used too much glue. I resorted to superglue in the end which works fine you just have to be quick as it bonds the MDF quickly.

An added bonus is that the designer has Planetfall in mind and so the scale looks great when against the Spartans light infantry models, although I do sometimes think the windows seem quite large. I had a look at the scale comparison with my Terran MBT and I think the scale is off on the tank rather than the Terrain as you can see the Tank is quite small compared with the Terran APC.

Laser Cut Architect and Planetfall scale comparison

I did hit a snag with one building in the starter kit where the roof doesn’t fit for one of the buildings because it’s too small. I am pleased to say that with no hassle and a quick email later and the replacement parts are on their way.

Overall the range is great if you are after a non-skyscraper set for I think a very reasonable price. This will defiantly get you started – I am going to end up with

12” x 18” worth of terrain to fill my board with. Darrell, the guy who makes them is couldn’t be more helpful and it’s a real bonus that he is a Planetfall player so that scales fit. I hope to get hold of the defense line sets he does as well to use on the same board and take a look at some of the new stuff he is designing like a gate for the defense line. Only slight negatives are the lack of instructions for the starter set, but that’s nit picking as most modelers will easily work it out in no time.

Even if you’re not a 10mm gamer he has reproduced most of the items in the Iron Gulch range in 15mm and 28mm, although he says customers have used the 10mm defense lines for 28mm. So go take a look and let me know what you think.

Thanks for reading, for more wordage, check out this review of the Vallejo Mega Paint Set

I’ve been Chris, and I Woz ‘Ere too.