Hey Everyone,
Welcome to my first review/build guide. I plan to do these every now and then as I build model kits and paint them.
Today we’ll be focusing on the Door Set from Spartan Games as part of their Spartan Scenics range of scenery. I’ve got a few sets of this that I will slowly be building up over time and posting up details here as I do. I decided to start with the door sets since they seem very easy to do as a stand alone kit.
First impressions are good, I’m quite fond of Spartan’s products overall but this is my first real taste of their HDF scenery. The detail on these bits are great, especially considering they are just doors. Here’s a picture of everything that comes in the set;
Quite a nice variety of options here and it’s very simple to tell everything apart. They are a bit hard to see in the above picture but there are 6 transparent acrylic doors in addition to the HDF ones. This is something that you can only get with this set, you get doors and frames with the Starter Set but they are just the basic ones.
Overall the doors were very easy to put together, unfortunately there are no instructions. This seems to be a bit of a plague in miniature modeling these days, I understand it’s a cost cutting measure but it really can’t cost that much to include a bit of paper in your kits. That’s a personal pet peeve but one I’m sure others share. As I said though, the kit goes together really easily and it mostly involves a bit of common sense. Basically you get 6 Door frames and 6 end pieces to put at the end of hallways. Obviously this is all designed to work with the rest of the Spartan Scenics range but you could easily use these with other brands of scenery.
As you can see that’s all there really is to it. The pieces pop out of the sprues very nicely although you do have to give them a bit of encouragement at times. Ones off the sprue a quick sand will remove any left over tabs and you can start putting them together. Surprisingly they dry fit together very well, you almost don’t need to use glue at all! I still put a few spots of superglue on the joins but I have no doubt these frames will be able to take a bit of a beating and hold together. Most people recommend PVA for HDF products but I find a good quality superglue does the job and makes everything a lot faster.
The Door parts go together really easily as well, as simple as popping out the door you want and gluing a top piece to them. Then the door just slides into the gap
Simple!
Now it’s important to note that you aren’t required to glue the door into the frame, and honestly I don’t see why you would. Unlike a lot of these kits I’ve build with moving parts, these doors actually fit perfectly. It’s a loose enough fit that you don’t have to worry about it scratching any paint off, or risk damaging the frame and the door. It’s also just tight enough that the door won’t fall over unless tipped completely upside down. This allows you to have nice modular doors to work with. It also means you’re able to get the most out of your frames.
The End pieces go together really easily as well, just the door and the base piece. Not much to say about these really, simple to build and they serve their purpose as a nice end cap for hallways. I can also see them being used as floating walls for cover in a game like Infinity.
As I stated before there are a few different types of doors in the set, the majority are the basic door pictured above but there are also the transparent doors and a few damaged doors.
This is what the damaged door looks like once assembled. It’s probably the most underwhelming part of the kit. It’s really just the standard door with some really cheap looking cracks in it. I like the concept behind these doors since you can use it to not only indicate damage but for little firing holes in games that use true Line of Site. However the implementation is a little uninspired.
I did however really want to use one so I decided to make a few modifications and see if I could improve it without putting in too much effort.
I think I’ve definitely improved it and believe this will look a lot better once I’ve given it some paint. It really was as simple as taking my hobby knife to the edges of the existing holes and shaving off bits at random angles to create a bit more depth and give it a more chaotic look. I also scoured some tiny lines emanating from the wholes too to indicate a bit of stress. As I said with a few pigments and some oil washes this should come up looking pretty nice.
Here you can see just an example of what you can build using the kit, none of these doors are actually glued in so I can swap and change them as necessary. You also get more doors than frames so you can build up all the doors and just swap them around as it fits your game. It was disappointing to find out that there aren’t enough top pieces to be able to utilise every door in the set. I was left with 2 doors without tops. Not bad but a bit disappointing.
Here you can see what I ended up with after building the kit. The Clear acrylic doors are the real standout and definitely a great addition to this set. I didn’t get a good photo but they actually all have writing on them. Things like “Cryogenics” and “Armoury” so you can actually use them to indicate areas on your table or in an RPG. It’s a small thing but I quite like it. I’ll also point out that I’ve only dry fitted the tops to the clear doors as I will need to paint them separately. I’m also considering using some clear colours like Badger’s Ghost Tints to add a bit of colour to the doors. I’ll make that decision once I’ve got a colour scheme locked in.
Finally, because I feel it’s worth mentioning. The doors are not double sided, so only one side has detail on it. This makes for some pretty boring looking doors from one side and it’s a little disappointing. I understand this is mostly part of the way they manufacture these kits but it still bothers me a bit when you look at them all from behind;
My damaged one and the acrylic door aren’t a problem and the frames are still fine. However the end tabs and the standard doors look pretty dull compared to the other side.
The kit does come with some detail panels which you can see in the first photo. These are just little shapes with etched detail in them. The idea is you stick them on the doors etc. to make them a little more unique. Unfortunately they are too thick so putting them on the backs of the doors means that the doors no longer open and close. Perfect if you plan on leaving them closed all the time but not so much if you want them to open up and have them hot swappable. I did however manage to use the detail panels on the backs of my End Pieces which did help a bit.
It’s going to take a bit of work but I’ll probably just add some very fine texture paste to the boring sides just so when I paint them there is more than just a flat surface.
Overall I’m very happy with the kit. They aren’t much on their own obviously but the modular nature of the doors and frames means they’ll be useful for all sorts of purposes. I plan to get more of the Spartan Scenics corridors and I’ve already got a Tower Set sitting beside me. I’ll most likely stick to building these small pieces first though while I work out exactly what I want to do with it. I think these could fit perfectly alongside any other 28mm Sci-Fi Scenery and are almost made to work with something like Space Hulk or Infinity. I definitely plan to build more so keep your eye out for more from this range.
Until Next Time
– The Valiant Knight
The Valiant Knight 