"Getting started with 15mm - and Castles!" Topic

Greetings one and all, new player here looking to dip my toes into the world of 15mm fantasy battles. I've already made a choice on making my entry with Battle Valor models, which as I understand it are some of the slightly larger 15mm sculpts on the market.

However whilst the BV company makes a lot of models they have a more limited range of terrain and siege weapon options; and for me one of the big attractions to 15mm is being able to actually do something like a siege within a sane frame of time and budget (as opposed to trying to do a proper sized siege in something like Age of Sigmar).

So I've been hunting around for some terrain and siege weapons and would welcome some advice from others to what I've found and if there are some other options out there on the market that I've not found.

1) Kallistra. They advertise their models for 10-15mm models and they are fixed structures (no taking off the roof). That said they offer a good selection of building segments to craft up a castle and one can even swap in and out broken segments for reflecting battle damage. They've also a neat looking selection of siege weapons.

Whilst I like what I see, I'm a little concerned that the BV models might look a little too big in comparison.
Castle walls, bridges, fort : kallistra.co.uk/?page=15

Siege Equipment: link

scenery items: kallistra.co.uk/?page=17

2) Alternative Armies HOB Fantasy range buildings: link
They've also a range of walls and decoration features as well. A suitable source for some structures to populate a castle or town scape.

3) Battle Valor: link

Makes their own (actually I think its resold from another firm because I did find another company that appeared to be the source of them, priced similar but I can't find their link now). That said the prices on theirs are somewhat higher, though for the buildings and the castle on show there there are the options to remove the roof segments. Not an essential feature, but it is a nice one. Personally I'd prefer to use some of the castle and building options noted above and then use the wall and barricade segments from BV.

So that's what I've found thus far, I'd greatly welcome anyone's input and ideas. Heck if you've got photos that would be great, esp seeing the boards and things you've done.

link

Might try these

If you have access to a friend with a 3D printer, there are a lot of castle/wall files that can be scaled down for 15mm. You can also look at the Zvezda line of castles -- probably on ebay now. They are for 20 mm, but would look like stout fortresses for the 18mm troops. I've used them before for that and they don't look that bad.

BV figures are great, BTW.

The Kallistra stuff is nice, but on the smaller side. Okay for representational terrain, but will look undersized with the oversized BV sculpts at 1:1 scale. The AA buildings suffer a similar issue- very nice, but smallish, even with more standard 15mm. BV look are the Old Glory/Blue Moon casts. 20mm scale should work pretty well with BV fogs- they get awfully close and most buildings are undersized anyway.

The slightly small stuff should be fine for gaming, especially modelling sieges where the scale will be compressed anyway. You can also find aquarium castles and ruins that work well. Alternately, foamcore should be a fairly easy way to work up squarish towers and walls fairly easily. Round towers can be made from small carboard tubes and texture-apply thin interior drywall patch and slap on a few cardboard/palasticard cut brick formations for jutting stones. For crenelated tops, just cut them from paper card/cardboard/platicard in a straight line and curve into a fitted circle on the top.

Thanks guys!
Interesting to read about the scale aspects and I agree most terrain is never perfectly scaled to models (there's a few exceptions like the Dropzone Commander stuff); heck even within most lines of models tanks and infantry are rarely scaled the same (that is unless space marines are packed into rhinos like sardines in a tin).

I'll do some hunting around for some 20mm castles.

Disaster -- I saw those but whilst they look really nice I discounted them as I'm not a fan of the style of construction they went for – esp on the towers – with the slot edges sticking out. Nice work and certainly cheaper than a fair few other options.

So this just appeared on the front page of the site

baueda.com/index.html

Over in Italy and they appear to make a range of stuff from tents to buildings to forts. My eyeballing is that the forts might again be on the smaller side, but some of the encampment items might be worth considering for things like barrels and tents. Anyone got any for a formal verdict?

The Bauda camp gear is great stuff. It is aptly scalled, so it looks right with my essex and splintered light guys. it might be a tad small for Battle Valor or Blue Moon. I also have old Martian Metals fantasy figs which are closer to true 15s and the stuff is a little big for them.