review by Colin D. Speirs

As a lad I used to play cowboys and indians even though the only link my home country had to the Mythical West were the emigrants who, like the James brothers, became part of those legends.

I'm too old to go snapping at my pals with a cap-shooting six-gun, though there is this Western week on the Isle of Cumbrae off the west coast of Scotland but that's another story, and I take my sojourns into the prairie, range wars and gun-fights by use of miniatures on a tabletop.

Scene settings help any game and for those bank-robberies and show-downs it is much better to supply an authentic looking backdrop to the action. This Eric Hotz has provided by drawing 30mm scale Western buildings and selling the artwork in PDF format .

The range, which includes shops, saloons, stables and bath-houses are designed to be printed onto card, cut out and assembled, using white glue or a glue stick such as a Pritt-stick, though other methods may occur to you such as gluing the building art to hard foa or polystyrene and building them out of that.

Each building set comes in both colour and monochrome and for all but the smallest buildings two sets of floor-plans for each storey, one with drawn in furniture and fittings and the other blank to use with model scenics or to draw in your own.

Most of the buildings will be in sections when cut out but Mr. Hotz has done his best to ensure that the sections are as large as possible to minimise gluing. This means that the parts are close together on the sheet so scissors will not be enough to separate them, a steel rule, cutting pad and sharp knife are also necessary.

Sections that have to be glued together are provided with tabs to allow one section to be glued to another but the tabs are a little narrow for the inital hold until the glue sets and you may wish, where possible, to extend the tabs for ease of assembly.

That apart contruction is, with a little patience, easy, the longest part usually being cutting the shapes out, especially the porches and rails where you'll have to cut out squares of unwanted card leaving wooden ralings and supports untouched.

Which brings us to a slight drawback. The uprights for such components as the porches are thin and have a tendency to bend under the weight of the roof section so you are advised to reinforce them by gluing on bits of scrap card before cutting out to help yourself out.

Although scaled to 30mm the buildings seem a little short compared to the figures I used and the floorplans a little cramped but that is down to the big slotta bases I used which add to the height of the figures and give them a large "foot-print" on the map.

The art is excellent with the paint-work showing signs of weathering and everything fitting together perfectly. The artist has also provided "add-ons", posters, replacement windows, counters for furniture and items to give the gamers everthing they need except figures and rules. Although there are other sets out there they are mostly for 25mm or 1/72nd scale rather than 30mm and the range og buildings available is already impressive.

The buildings can be placed on CD-ROM if you desire for a few dollars delivery charge. The CD has a proper cover for the case and CD label and packaging is sturdy enough to get the CD across the Atlantic.

This range of buildings is an inexpensive and effective way to scene set for RPGs and wargames set in the old West, or on a frontier world based on Josh Whedon's series "Firefly " if you're so minded.