First 4Ground Building

The first item I tackled from the vacation haul was the 4Ground building.  I have really been looking forward to building one of these kits ever since I first learned of them.  This kit was $20 from Brookhurst and that makes it comparable to the Battlefront houses I have been getting on the subscription deal.  The BF houses run about $21 each.

These kits come in a plastic bag package, so nothing real fancy.  Inside there are several laser-cut sprues with the various parts.  The 'pre-painted' aspect of these involves using different painted MDF boards for various parts.  These boards are painted prior to the laser cuts and, therefore, show some scorch marks that mar the color.  In addition, the color is not on the edges of the pieces which is quite noticeable once the model has been built.

I found the instructions for this kit to be excellent.  The are full color and have a nice step by step process.  If you take your time and follow the instructions the kits is not too difficult to assemble.  If you are like me and think you know it all you might have to redo some bits here and there.

At the end of the instructions they have included some color signs and posters to enhance your model.  I thought this was a nice touch.  Being the 'with it' dude I am I promptly threw away these instructions, and the cool signs and posters, once I was done building the model. *sigh*

I am not going to do a step by step on the assembly as the instructions do a really nice job of that.  Besides, I forgot to take pictures as I was working on it.  One important thing I learned is that some of the parts can be quite delicate.  It is strange to me that some parts will literally fall of the sprue and others take some work.  I did manage to break one of the roof sides while taking it off the sprue.  Fortunately I was able to repair it and the damage is not noticeable.

The ability to remove the roof and the second floor for interior access is really nice.  You can fit one Flames of War medium base in each side of the building but to fit them in the bases must be facing the walls rather than the windows (sorry, no picture of that).  This not that big of a deal but if the model was just a few mm longer you could fit bases in much easier and in all directions.

Here is a side by side with one of the Battlefront houses.  In the end, being that these are basically the same price, I prefer the BF model.  The BF model is fully assembled and nicely painted for only $1 more.  The 4Ground building took me nearly 8 hours to assemble as was fiddly in a few spots.  I can see that people who do not enjoy building models will not like these kits.  The paint on the 4Ground model needs work in my opinion.  Either the whole thing needs to be repainted or I need to find the 4Ground paints that they produce to match the kits.  As hard as it is to find these kits in my area the paint would be impossible so I would have to order it online.  For a $20 kit that is too much trouble so I will just repaint it.

I will likely purchase a couple more of the 4Ground kits but I think next I will try one of the unpainted kits.  These are cheaper but, it seems, they are simpler kits than the pre-paints.

If I were t do the whole star rating thing I would have to give these 3 out of 5.  If this was a few dollars cheaper they would rate much higher.