TimeCast 15mm US Army Barrack, Office Block

US Army Barrack/Office Block. Photographed at Camp Holloway (near Pleiku) in Vietnam. Prefabricated Corrugated Iron building suitable for almost any theatre of war. The plain building sells for £4.50 unpainted and you ca get a painted version for £10, while the sandbagged version is £5.50 (£12.50 painted)

Timecast specialise in "real" buildings i.e. ones copied or at least closely based on photographs or paintings. They do two versions of this building, one with just the building and one, the version I have, with additional sandbag protection all the way round.

They come in solid resin and my two, like the other Timecast buildings I've had are bubble free good clean castings. They paint up well as you can see from my photographs (with Peter Pig 15mm Special Forces troops alongside to give you an idea of scale). I had very little preparation to do on the building, just a few tiny lumps to file off and then straight to the undercoating. My painting is a long way from being brilliant but I was happy with the results and they fit in well on the table. They are actually quite enjoyable to paint and you can use some of the bright colours we rarely get to use in 20th Century games.

So far they have really only been used as "decoration" sitting on the edge of the table while the Americans drove out to hunt for the VC but next game they are going to be in the thick of it, under heavy attack from the VC. Those sandbags are going to come in useful when that happens.

Altogether there are 17 buildings in their 15mm range and they also have smaller ranges in both 10 and 6mm scales. These smaller scales actually have different buildings from the 15mm range. The 15 mm range, as well as these US buildings, includes Vietnamese village buildings, shanty town buildings and shops, and several French colonial buildings. Most of these would do fine in any 20th Century south East Asian scenario.

I can heartily recommend Timecast and if you meet them at shows in the UK you'll find them friendly and helpful and happy to bring pre-ordered stuff along. This is a wise precaution as they don't bring all ranges to the shows. They also occasionally put painted buildings up for sale on eBay. Eventually I'll have a whole Vietnamese village and a shanty town street, if I go to enough shows.