WW2 10 mm Rubble etc. review

One of the things I brought home from Salute was a selection of 10 mm terrain items: mainly rubble, but also some walls, fences, and a few bridges.  I got stuff from three different manufacturers: Pendraken, Time Cast and Field Works.

The first thing I noticed is the variety in colour: I have gotten white resin, tan resin, green resin, and dark grey resin models.  They all feel rather brittle, and they are are stronger than they look.
I also purchased walls and fences from Time Cast, as well as a set of bridges.  Let's start with those:

 The bridges in itself look nice enough.  They are well built, and easy to integrate into a game table.  I'm not a big fan of the blob of tree on one side, but that's a matter of taste.

Something I really did not like about their 10 mm bridges though, is their size:

The bridges are just undersized - definitely so for my terrain scale (1cm = 10m).  The stream that goes underneath is about 2 m wide, in that case.  The bridge itself is 2 m wide as well.  My river tiles have a river that is 5 cm wide.  A 25 mm square base cannot be positioned on the bridge, all but the tiniest tanks cannot cross it.  If I use it, it will be a pedestrian bridge, purely cosmetic terrain.  It'll probably end up in someones 6 mm terrain at the club.

Another thing I purchased from Time Cast was a set of fences.  These were painless.  Cast in metal, the right height, narrow, flat base - after some cleaning up.  Happy with those.

I also acquired two sets of rubble from them.  Both sets consist of two buildings, all of them in an advanced state of rubblededness :-)  So in total I have gotten 4 building rubbles.

The models are about 10 cm across, and only feature remnants of walls.  I like the look of them, the size is right, and the detail is fine.  These'll be easy to paint, and a pleasure to use.  Definitely a good buy.

The last thing I bought from Time Cast is a pair of damaged buildings:

 This is the first one.  I find it rather small, a square inch base will not fit inside.  The windows are closed, which I rather dislike.  I'll have to open them up myself.

The second one's size is better, but still the inside space is limited.  The buildings look great, and so did the painted versions I saw on Salute, but they are not practical.  Another thing that I disliked about them is the imprecisions in scale:  both buildings are 10 mm buildings.  Now take a look at this:

The building on the left has a door and first floor windows that are about double the size of the one on the right.  That is not gonna look nice on the table.  As a matter of fact, the two floors of the one on the right add up to about one floor on the left.  Either something is definitely off, or the fellow from Time Cast accidentally handed me a 6 mm model.  I will get in touch with them to find out.  Seeing this kinda worried me about the scale, so I compared the large one with a Pendraken model:

 Here the scale looks about right, although the Time Cast model has bigger doors and - strangely enough - a smaller footprint size.  This brings us to the Pendraken range.  From them I purchased the 4 ruined buildings they have in their range.  Pendraken is mainly a 10 mm miniature manufacturer, the resin range is rather modest, but slowly growing.  The model above has two large rooms, easy to put inch bases in.

 The second model has the same big room concept, which is easy for playing.  All Pendraken models also have closed windows and doors, but they are considerably thinner than the other walls, and I expect they'll be easier to remove.

 The third model has a splendid fireplace, lovely detail there, but it's less practical from a gaming point of view: units will want to benefit from the cover these ruins offer, but small spaces like that, while realistic and prettier, will not allow that you put a unit in.

The last range is from Fieldworks, a manufacturer hitherto unknown to me. They had a small booth on Salute, with a lady manning it (sorry).  Their models looked lather large, but they had a nice ruined church and that sold me:

The Fieldworks models are rather sparsely decorated.  They have big inner dimensions, and the windows are cut out.  They church, with its big open area, evidently provides enough space to place units inside, but what about the houses?

 The house above also offers big spaces.  The ruins are two storey, with second floor surfaces that you can remove.  Decoration has been kept to a minimum, but there is ample room for units inside: you can have units on every floor, which makes the models very suitable for my sort of game.  The house below has the same qualities.  I have the feeling the maker of these finds playability more important than looks.

CONCLUSION
This, of course, is my conclusion.  I play a tactical, small scale game, on a scale somewhere between skirmish and platoon scale.  My square inch bases have three figures on them, and they represent a fire team with 3 to 5 soldiers.  I need buildings that allow movement inside them, and that means I need room inside.

I find the Time Cast models are too small for my needs.  I imagine they work fine for platoon sized or company sized games, where units don't move about in houses.  I don't like their discrepancy in scales.  And I think their bridge size is just off.

The Pendraken models are a good size, and offer a nice tradeoff between looks and size for my playing style.  The look is nice and consequent, and neutral enough to allow mixing.

The Fieldworks miniatures are the ones I'm the most happy about, and in hindsight, I wish I had purchase more of these and less from Time Cast.  These buidlings work wonders for anything skirmish up to squad scale.  All their buildings have removeable roofs and floors.  I'm happy I discovered them, and that alone has made the visit to Salute worthwile.