I bought some Sarissa Precision buildings for the upcoming Arnhem campaign that Lucius and I are going to be playing. I’ve managed to get my hands on some of the aerial reconnaissance photos and that, plus the Arnhem campaign in WSS 74 have made it easy to plan for the terrain we need.

In any event, here are the first three builds:

These three buildings were fast, easy builds. I have left off the window and door treatments as I’m getting together bits of cast-off MDF to make some rubble piles etc before painting. I am very happy with my purchases of these, especially considering the postage (through Warlord) was free, which isn’t nothing considering Vancouver Island’s distance from most places.

The chateau though, well, had me calling it Sarissa Imprecision and using choice sailor-language (in my mind only, of course). I have built Warbases MDFbuildings (excellent), Terrains4Games MDF buildings (also excellent), and the above buildings. I guess I got spoiled as this kit is terrible.

Let’s start with the ground floor. I put on the door and window treatments (thank goodness) as I figured that they would possibly interact with the construction. The back doorframe prevents the attachment of a whole railing piece and needed to be cut down to size. Which was frustrating and an indication of things to come. When putting the ground floor on the base, the floor wouldn’t sit all the way down. I tried everything, including disassembling the whole thing, but the way it is, there is a small gap at the bottom. Not enough to cause a huge issue as I’m sure it will be covered with flock.

The middle floor was okay, though the walls don’t sit IN the floor (the other kits have two walls sitting in holes, with the others coming on as end pieces so they are much more solid), which makes their placement fiddly. The floor itself though, won’t match up with the walls of the ground floor. The 2mm MDF walls just aren’t true enough and the placement of the holes is off just enough. So I figured I’d have to trim the tabs (I’m calling them tabs/joining lugs for lack of better term) to make it sit flush. Not the end of the world.

Next the top floor with the pretty garbled windows. That is not a typo. I had to use sandpaper and a modelling knife to get the roof pieces fit over the frames. This wasn’t a small misalignment but a major oversight. Fixing it was quite fiddly work and really annoying. If I’m paying $40 USD for a product I expect it to actually do what it is supposed to. I finally convinced the roof to fit on, and used the widow’s walk floor to help keep things aligned. Incidentally, if you want to remove the top and place troops inside, well, bring a lever. I’m not sure how or if this is going to work once this is painted as the roof top is not easy to remove. It may involve me cutting tabs off to make this go.

From a distance, it looks good, but it will need the joining lugs cut on the walls, floors, roof supports. After finishing, I took a look for others with issues, and it turns out that I’m not alone, another blogger noticed the same railing issue. That was enough validation for me to tell me that there are more issues with this kit than with my modelling skills.

So, if you are looking for good MDF buildings, Sarissa’s smaller models are great, and worth the money, but avoid the chateau until they sort out of the problems.