Supreme Littleness Designs Ruined Fort Review

This is the scaled down Supreme Littleness Designs ruined fort from the Middle East range in 28mm, this version being the 20/15mm equivalent. It's a very atmospheric looking model and really captures both the characteristic features of an ancient Near or Middle Eastern fortress but also the realistic elements of a ruined castle, with the exposed rubble core of the wall and the archway being particularly well thought out. I really like it, even though I had difficulty assembling the upper floor to the tower due to the slightly misaligned holes in the tower walls, which meant that the beams were not all at the same level. As this is a pre-release model kit, this is just the sort of minor snag that you'd expect, so it will be fixed and won't be an issue when the kit is made available.

If you look closely, you'll see that the tower sides with two beams are slightly higher than those with three. The card floor is laser cut with card prongs to fit into these holes, with the end result being mashed cardboard due primarily to my lack of care and attention to the instructions, but also as a result of the misplaced holes. Anyway, I fixed this minor problem by feeding steel wire beams cut from spears into one hole and out of the matching hole on the other side, so that the floor piece could rest on top of them. It also meant that the beams were still visible on the outside of the tower, which is a nice design feature that I wanted to keep. This minor surgery won't be necessary when the kit is actually released for sale.

I added some small bits of rubble into the wall spaces on the curtain wall and between the gate layers, as suggested in the instructions, which I think looks really good and is a cracking bit of clever thinking on the part of the part of the designer. It really helps to give that tumbledown effect and reminds me very much of all the medieval castles that I've clambered over. I also really like the parapets with their Arabian style crenellations. The designer has clearly done his homework to capture the look of a ruined fortress in Syria, Iraq or even the NW Frontier. He was worried that the 20mm scaling of the model would make it too big for 15mm but I think it's pretty much spot on, as you can see from the photos.

If you ignore the slight issue with the tower floor the model went together very easily and, assuming you follow the instructions provided as a pdf, you can't really go wrong. I haven't painted mine yet but have textured it with acrylic paste and undercoated it with Halfords Matt Khaki spray paint, so that you can see what the assembled model looks like. The price for this model kit is £9.50, although it's not yet available for sale on the Supreme Littleness Designs website. I think it's well worth the money and will make a neat little terrain feature or scenario objective for all sorts of periods, mine being destined for colonial skirmish games. I'd love it if some more ruined wall sections were available so that a whole ruined fortress could be constructed for just this sort of thing?