Amera Plastic Mouldings 28mm Buildings – Review

Last year I played a few 28mm fantasy miniature games, namely Frostgrave and Songs of Blades and Heroes.  I played at a friends house so was lucky enough to make use of their fantastic terrain collection.  Now, I have a small collection of 28mm scenery – trees and hills, and a collection of Wild West buildings, but nothing that fits traditional fantasy.

Personally, I like fighting my miniature battles over well presented terrain.  It doesn’t have to be magazine photo shoot level, but having something more than a sheet draped over the kitchen table helps suspend belief and gets me “in the battle”.  Particularly true when you need to check line of sight and get down to a models eye view of the battlefield.

I did toy with building my own terrain, some styrofoam, cork, hardboard, PVA glue – but, it didn’t really work out.  Maybe I’ll try again at a later date.  So off to Google to look for some suitable fantasy / medieval ruins.

I usually start with an image search and then dig deeper to find out the company responsible… or talented individual.  I quickly found Amera Plastic Mouldings I also found some helpful links on their site showing what customers had created with their products and how they went about it.

Amera are based in the UK and make vacuum formed plastic moulded scenery and buildings for various scales and periods, including a partnership with Airfix Models.

The prices are fantastic, so I opted for the following kits from their Fantasy Realms range;

• Building Ruins
• Terrace Ruins
• Ruined Chapel
• Castle Ruins

Building pieces

Tower

Everything arrived promptly within a few days by courier, all well packed and undamaged.
For the lot, including postage, it was £20 (US$27).  And as you’ll see, some of these pieces are big!

Preparation involved trimming the excess plastic from the moulds and then washing in warm soapy water, just to remove any agents used in the moulding process.

After trimming, all the pieces fit together quite well.  For a solid hold and quick drying time I used a hot glue gun.  One of the building corners came with a base piece with moulded rubble, but the smaller corner didn’t come with a base.   For this I cut a piece of thin hard board and glued the building to it with hot glue.

Some scattered rubble was added with cork pieces and PVA glue.  Once everything was dry I sprayed a base coat of grey auto primer (from Halfords in the UK).  Painting was then done in layers, dry brushing different shades of grey (mainly Games Workshop).   I then applied a black wash into the recesses for the stone work to highlight the stone blocks.  The whole buildings were then washed with a brown wash (Games Workshop Agrax Earthshade).   I then picked out some highlights with a very light grey and white.

The base of the smaller building that I added the base to, I used a fine filler pasted on the base and then scored out a flagstone effect.  In the same way I did the stone work, I dry brushed and used washes in the grooves and white to highlight.

Corner ruins 1 front

Corner ruins 1 rear

Corner ruins 2 front

Corner ruins 2 rear

Corner ruins 2 side

The final touches was to add a flock and static grass mix.  Some small grass tufts of different colours and a few bushes, all glued down with the hot glue gun.

Ruined tower full size

Ruined tower front

Ruined tower rear

I’m really pleased with the final results.  The Amera moulds were great to work with. Easily cut, and everything fit together.  The other great thing about the product is how light it is.  This makes it very easy to transport between gaming venues.  The plastic is also strong, so should stand up well to handling for gaming set ups.

I can definitely recommend Amera Plastic Mouldings.  They have a growing range of products in different scales and covering different time periods.  You’ll find products for fantasy, sci-if, medieval and World War 2.  There are a few 15mm WW2 items that have already caught my eye….

Amera Plastic Mouldings – Fantasy Realms range