Cost US$8 for the Stronghold set
        US$6 for the Siege Engine set

review by Colin D. Speirs

Coming back into miniature wargaming, particularly skirmish gaming, after many years and I find myself with a couple of problems. One, I have no talent for making terrain, Two, even if I did I don't have the time with all the other commitments I didn't have in my callow youth.

Thankfully the advent of the internet and cheap colour printers has come to my aid. Rather than spend vast sums on pre-built terrain or precious hours that I don't have on scratchbuilding there are firms out there selling printable terrain that looks good and right up there is Microtactix and their skilled artist/designer Gary M. Williams. I've used his paper figures from the "Budget battlefield" range for wargaming and built cardboard castles with "Dirt Cheep Keeps" so I was interested in his Stronghold series for Dark Ages and frontier based games.

What you get in each set
Stronghold Set	Siege Set
Earthenwork (Pallisade, Earthbank and catwalks) Earthenwork Corners (Pallisade, Earthbank and catwalks, one bends "in" the other "out") Gates Mantlets (wooden shields to protect beseiging archers) Gabions and Chevaux-de-frise (Earth-filled wicker tubs and pointy stakes both used to impede attackers) Look out towers (with space for at least one figure inside) Stronghold (Central Strongpoint on hill protected by pallisade) Tile clips (paper stands to help clip terrain pieces together)	Ballista with wooden shield Catapult Battering Ram Siege Tower Tents (Pavilion, two designs of small tent and two cookfire standup figs) Earthbanks (Bank and inner and outer corners) Stand up figures (painted fronts, silhouette backs, 9 styles of figure)

Each set is a single PDF file of instructions and components (20 pages [10.6 MB] for the Stronghold set, 15 pages [7.09 MB] for the Siege set) with some terrain pieces using multiple copies of a particular page. Print onto card (or paper and transfer to card or polystyren) and assemble using white glue such as Pritt stickand voilá you have your buildings.

Well of course it isn't quite as simple as that. This range, unlike previous ranges from Microtactix that I have built, have an awful lot of struts and support from which you have to cut white card. This reinforces the first thing to know about this range. It is not for children. To build them properly you will need craft knives, a good straight edge such as a steel rule and a cutting surface. This takes a reasonable amount of time and I'm afraid I've shortcutted the process by piercing the white space with a sharp pair of small scissors and cutting inside the struts. This means that the examples I have built are not as good looking as they would be if built properly, hence my inclusion of one of Microtactix's own photos.

The Stronghold set is simple and has only three "modular" terrain pieces, unless you count the gate, the Earth bank and two directions of corner, one bending "in" towards the area defended and the other bending "out" towards the outside and this means that you can create many different styles of earthern fort and, if you have higher terrain inside your outer earthern works, you can have inner rings of defences or give the earthernworks to the beseigers of a castle, perhaps made using Microtactix's "Dirt Cheep keeps"

The Siege Engines are fun even if slightly tricky to assemble, especially trying to make cylindrical axles and hinges. If built properly they have moving parts, which is truly delightful, and combined with the fieldwork parts from the Stronghold set mean that you can have a proper encampment with circumvallation and contravallation if you want (basically trenches that face inward to the castle you are attacking and another line outward to face any force trying to lift the siege)

Apart from the time consuming nature of building the pieces, these sets have only a couple of minor flaws. One, and it's just a niggle, is that the pages aren't numbered or labbelled. It would be useful to have 'Catapult Sheet A' and 'Catapult Sheet B' or whatever on each sheet. I printed out many sheets at once and a couple of days later I don't remember the order I printed them in. The other, bigger, flaw is that the main stronghold itself is a closed terrain piece. If you wanted figures firing from windows then you'd have to do some serious adaptation, similarly the space between the stronghold and its pallisade is just wide enough to give an inch around clearance, if you place it just so. Since I'm using inch wide bases that means any error and my second line of defence can't have figures down one side. Again a bit of adaptation could give you a slightly wider hill, but it is usable with care as is.

However at the end this set cannot really be faulted. The attention to detail, such as interior surfaces in the watchtower or the back of the earthbanks under the catwalks shows what care the creator of these terrain pieces has put into it and the subject matter is rare in the world of paper terrain pieces and at the price they cannot be faulted.