Miniature Building Authority Small Stucco Townhouse with Dormer and Stone Farm House
The second additions to my Miniature Building Authority collection were the Stone Farm House and the Small Stucco Townhouse with Dormer. Both have the red chimney pots and the green bases that I am not so fond of, as do all of the MBA buildings in the Eurovillage series. Of course, this is more than compensated by the fact that they also come prepainted, have open windows for true line of sight, removable roofs, and and have floor inserts for multiple floors.
The Small Stucco Townhouse with Dormer
With the word small in its name, I wasn’t expecting too much, but was pleasantly surprised when I opened the box. It seems to have a newer fresher design than a few of the older buildings. The blue door doesn’t look out of place and there’s room in the top for a 3×3 unit on 20mm bases. You could squish more miniatures in certainly.
As I note upon getting my first good look at it in the Youtube video, the paint colors on my Small Stucco Townhouse didn’t match the packaging. Mine is light grey, but the packaging shows a yellow building. The image on miniaturebuildingauthority.com of the building is a mix of the two, appearing a warm light light brown to me, close to Buff or Naples Yellow. When contacted about the building’s true color and the label’s image, Kirk from Miniature Building Authority had this to say: “We are working to get the artwork closer, but at this time it is what it is. So, we apologize if the box art is not the color you want, but we are working to improve this process.”
Stone Farm House
I don’t care for the Stone Farm House’s pale blue shutters and doors, but that’s not the reason I got it. It’s positively huge, especially compared to other MBA buildings. It measures in at 7 inches by 6.25 inches, and is just under 8.5 inches tall, not including its double chimneys. The second floor easily has room for a 8×6 unit of figures on 20mm bases to lie in ambush for an unsuspecting unit passing nearby.
The Stone Farm House though also has a few deficiencies:
- Raised Entrances: The green bases that I don’t care for are usually about 5 millimeters tall. In the case of the Stone Farm House though, there’s about an additional 5 millimeters of a stone ledge that both of its doors rest upon. This creates over half an inch of difference in height to the ground from the door. I will probably add a narrow Hirst Arts floor tile to restore a bit of realism.
- Odd Stone Pattern: The pattern on the sides of the building is very odd. To me, they look like crescent fingernail shapes. What sort of stone this represents is beyond me. It’s definitely textured though, but the Stone Farm House doesn’t withstand much close scrutiny.
- It’s not Straight:I actually hadn’t noticed its odd pattern or the raised entrances until preparing to review the building, but the fact that mine is a bit crooked, bowing out to the side? That quickly disappointed me. I can still push other MBA buildings up against it, but one side is straighter than the other. This is shown in the Youtube video above.
Final Thoughts
Despite the color issue, the Small Stucco Townhouse with Dormer is a solid offering from Miniature Building Authority and one of their most affordable. While many of their buildings are perfect for fantasy or medieval city settings, despite its name the Townhouse could easily be an outlying building in a village or farm.
The Stone Farm House has been superseded by MBA’s more recent offerings. It does boast an unusually large size, especially for an Miniature Building Authority building, but its flaws in either design or execution set the product back.
