New 2mm Buildings from Irregular Miniatures: Review/Comparison (2024)

I thought I’d do a short review of some of the recently released 2mm buildings from Irregular Miniatures, and see how they compare to another manufacturer, particularly with regard to those in my Strength and Honour project.

Now Irregular have had scenics and terrain to go alongside their 2mm figures for many, many years, but they were mostly very much in the ‘area’ category, with multiple buildings to a base rather than necessarily being scaled to go individually with the figures at around 1/900th, and it is only more recently that they have been working on stand-alone architecture.

I’ve discussed using the output of various manufacturers with 2mm troops before,

http://steelonsand.blogspot.com/2009/03/2mm-buildings-comparison-irregular-and.html

http://steelonsand.blogspot.com/2013/05/brigade-models-new-buildings-range.html

but wanted to catch up on what I think are some very good new entries from Ian and the gang, sculpted by the brilliant Geoff Addison:

https://en-gb.facebook.com/irregularminiatures/

http://www.irregularminiatures.co.uk/2mmRanges/GAScenics.htm

Now Geoff and Irregular have of late been absolutely knocking it out of the park in terms of adding new sculpts to the range, particularly some excellent scenic and terrain items, as well as these new offerings, so I was keen to take a look at some examples in the flesh, and offer a few thoughts.

Owning as I do already, an absolute plethora of small buildings, I just went for some representative examples from across the Classical/Arab and Medieval stock, rather than buying the whole real estate !

First up, let’s look at two Medieval Keeps and the Roman Military Watchtower:

In line with all of Mr Addison’s work, these all possess bags of character, and whilst demonstrating their ‘hand-sculpted’ pedigree, are clean and nicely proportioned - not ‘scale’ architectural models as such, but truly evocative and charming pierces that would bring interest to any table….

The wooden keep with moat is particularly fun, and usefully, the tower is a separate piece, so the moated mound could be used in a variety of ways:

Next up, the Classical Temples, Bath House and Military Command Building:

Lots of detail on all of these, and again, absolutely oozing character whilst giving a good representation of the originals - the Apse on the Bath House is spot-on !

The only funny thing, that I realised after taking these photos, is that the authentically characteristic arched doorways on the Command Building do look rather like the iconic sign of a somewhat anachronistic fast food chain - I promise to paint my arches a golden yellow !

As can be seen in the photo at the head of the post, and in the following, these more formal buildings are accompanied by a variety of smaller but just as useful utilitarian ones, including granaries, stables, barracks, and a great court-yarded Villa:

Once more, lots of potential there - all would be useful in a number of ways - similarly, the Shrine and Arab Tombs are really neat items - any self-respecting small scale world needs its own Via Appia lined with just such monuments and memorials !

So, how do these latest releases compare to those available from the other major manufacturer, namely Brigade Models in the UK ? - now I’ve gone via Scratch-built, Monopoly Houses, Rod Langton 1/1200th, Mighty Empires plastics to even 3mm from Peter Pig over the years, but the go-to has to be Brigade’s ranges in terms of the broadest variety of interesting individual buildings, and so I’ve put the two together in the following shots:

I think that you’ll immediately note that Irregular’s are larger, more on the chunky side of things, but not necessarily out of scale with Brigades’ -