Dave's Games Low Ruins and Crosspiece Ruins

I didn't expect my review of the Dave's Games Ruined Longhouse to be so well received, but on the other hand, it is a quality product so I really shouldn't have expected anything less. This time, I am going to show you two more of the ruined buildings sets from Dave Graffam, which I have combined to make one building.

The floor and four exterior walls are from the Low Ruins set, whilst the internal walls come from the Crosspiece Ruins set 1. The first decision that I had to make with the Low Ruins was to decide on its footprint. You have four options - 6" by 6", 6" by 4", 4" by 6" and 4" by 4". In case you are wondering, no, the 6" by 4" and 4" by 6" choices are not the same. One has long north/south walls and the other has long east/west walls. I opted for the 6" square choice.

The Crosspiece Ruins set is simply a collection of various lengths of wall that slot into each other to create a cross piece. They are not so much buildings per se, but parts of buildings. I thought that adding one of them to this model would break up the large expanse of empty floor space and make a much more interesting ruin with greater playing options for hiding figures in it. The first problem that I encountered is that the Crosspiece walls are much taller than those on the Low Ruins. The clue is in the name, Low Ruins, as they are only about 2" tall. So I had to cut off about an inch from the bottom of the Crosspiece walls in order to make them fit in better. Also, instead of a Crosspiece I opted for a T-section, giving me three rooms, one measuring 6" by 2" and the other two measuring 4" by 3". The layers that I chose for them were concrete walls with bullet holes for page 4 of the four pages provided. I cut a door frame in the long wall but deliberately left off the door. Presumably it got destroyed with the rest of the building. The short wall is made up of two small pieces with a gap between them to indicate where the door once was.

This overhead view gives you a good view of the floor and how the Crosspiece walls form the three rooms that make up the building. The Low Ruins set comes with a selection of eight floor patterns - cracked brown tiles, cracked grey tiles, flagstones, grey concrete, hardwood, patterned tiles, weathered wood and yellow concrete. I chose the cracked brown tiles for my floor. I also added two layers of rubble to it. You can add up to three layers of rubble but I didn't want to overdo it. Note how thick my walls are because I glue my printouts to thick mounting card. This gives my models incredible strength and durability.

This is the front of the house, or south exterior wall, showing a solid-looking front door. You can choose a metal door with a concrete frame and concrete framed windows, or a wooden door with wood frames for the door and window. Note that the door is not flush with the ground, so mind the step!

Moving round, here we see the west wall with a single window in the centre of it. The external walls come with a choice of nine textures - brown bricks, brown stone, grey bricks, grey concrete, grey stone, red bricks, stucco, weathered wood and yellow concrete. I chose the brown bricks for my external walls. The internal walls can match the external walls, or you can choose a different texture for them, as I did. You have the same nine options as for the external walls. I chose yellow concrete for my interior walls to match the colour scheme of my Crosspiece Ruins. The only layer option that is missing for the interior walls is bullet damage. That was no big deal, as I made sure to include bullet holes on my Crosspiece walls.

This is the south wall, which again contains a single window framed in concrete. I have added two layers on top of my external walls - air vents and gun damage. The air vent on this wall is located near the centre at the bottom.

Finally, we come to the east wall. I made a silly mistake when I printed out this wall. I added the door and window layer to it. The problem with that is the door is located at the far left of the wall, meaning that I'd have two doors in that corner, as the door on the south wall was literally just round the corner. This is my one and only criticism of the model. Having both doors in that corner makes no sense if you want to build this model with two doors. I was forced to reprint this wall without the door and windows layer on. If you make this model, you can only have one door on the outside, either to the right of the south wall or to the left of the east wall.
The amount of options you have for the Low Ruins set is just mind-blowing and makes it incredible value for money. I wasn't too sure whether I'd get any use out of the Crosspiece Ruins set but with this model I found the perfect use for them, even if I did have to trim them down to size. The Low Ruins is one of the easiest ruined building models you can make. So too, are the Crosspiece Ruins. Combine the two and you have a slightly more complex model, but one that I thought was well worth making. I am very happy with the outcome of this model and it just goes to show what you can do if you think outside the box.

Dave's Games Ruined Longhouse

When I posted my last ATZ batrep, I included on my game-board a couple of brand new buildings that I'd made recently. They were both fairly small ruined houses and both came from a card scenery company whom I have never mentioned before - Dave's Games. Dave's Games is run by Dave Graffam and he mainly produces buildings for the fantasy gamer, most of which are of little use to contemporary gamers like myself. However, he also makes a range of ruined buildings, which can be used in so many historical periods and genres. I bought a bundle pack of his ruined buildings late last year and got 17 buildings in the set for roughly £25.00. Absolutely fantastic value for money. Anyway, here is the first of his buildings that I made - the ruined longhouse.

I chose to make this building first, simply because it was the easiest to make and I knew it'd only take me a couple of days to complete. At the time that I made this I was also working on my WWG Mayhem City Police Station. I made this to give myself a break from making so many furniture items. I learnt the hard way that you can only make so many pieces of furniture before it becomes a chore.

The building has a footprint of 6" by 4" and is 4" tall. As you can see it is nothing more than four walls, a floor and a chimney. The hardest part of making it was cutting out the holes in the walls, and to be honest, that wasn't a very difficult task.

Here is an overhead view of the building, showing off the flagstoned floor with a scattering of rubble on it. Those of you not familiar with Dave Graffam's models may be thinking, yeah, I can see that, so what? Well, Dave's models have a special ingredient that makes them totally awesome and even better value for money than you'd imagine. It's called layers. Layers allow you to customise each model to your hearts content, giving you so many options that you could build hundreds of this model with every one of them being unique. For the floor, you have three basic options - flagstones (as shown here), concrete blocks and wood panelling. For the rubble, which you can add or leave out, you have four options. I chose options three and four. Options one and two added broken wooden beams.

This is one of the long side walls with the door in. The door is a separate layer, so if you don't want it on this wall you can leave it off. For my walls, I chose the plaster over bricks option. Other choices were bricks, stone and wood. The plaster option overlays one of the three basic choices. Here, you can see the brickwork showing through the gaps in the plaster rendering.

Here is one of the short walls, showing a massive hole in it that a person could walk through without any bother. Further options for your walls are stone corners and/or wooden beams to give it that Tudor-style look.

Here is the second of the long walls, and I chose to add two windows to it. The internal walls are textured the same as the external walls, however, you do have an option for wooden interior walls, if you fancied a contrast.

This is the second short wall, with the chimney stack abutting it. The chimney is asymmetrically shaped. The sticky-out bit (actual architectural term!) at the bottom can face to the left or to the right. Your choice. If you add up all the choices of layers that you're presented with it soon becomes apparent that my assertion that you could make hundreds of these buildings with each one being unique and different from the others is no exaggeration. This has to be the greatest strength of Dave's models. The level of customisation you have at your fingertips is simply breath-taking. Also, bear in mind, this is probably the simplest of his ruined buildings to make. With his more complex buildings the choices of customisation are even greater. In the advertising industry, a product should have a U.S.P. (Unique Selling Point) to make it stand out from its competitors. Dave's Games' U.S.P. is undoubtedly layers. Fat Dragon Games have layers on some of their models (with the likes of bullet holes, dirt or graffiti, for example) but nowhere near the extent offered by Dave Graffam.
The bundle of 17 ruined buildings that I bought just knocked me for six when I saw what I could do with them. I should point out that all of the ruined buildings are available to purchase separately but I'd definitely advise going for the bundle pack, which is far greater value for money. If you wanted to buy the ruined longhouse separately, it costs just £1.31 according to the RPG Now and Wargame Vault websites that I looked at this morning. Both sites stock the full range of Dave Graffam models.
The idea of adding layers to WWG models has been put forward on their forum, but it looks unlikely to happen, which I personally, think is a great shame.
The more novels that I read about a zombie apocalypse, the more I realise that so many buildings are going to end up in a ruined state. Fire, for example, will destroy many of them. I also realised that my own version of Mayhem City was going to need a lot more ruined buildings than I originally envisaged. So expect to see more ruined buildings in my ATZ batreps. I'll tell you now that a lot of them are going to come from Dave's Games.