XOLK Cottage in Ruins Review

The first XOLK product that ever caught my attention was their Cottage in Ruins. This product runs for $10.99 Canadian ($8.25 American in Today’s dollar) and is fairly impressive for that price point. Below is a picture of how the ruins paint up.

Above: A WW2 British Commander and two rifle men guard take up a position in the ruins.

Overall, this was a fairly easy model to build and paint. I spray painted it black to start, dry brushed it, ran a black wash over the piece and then highlighted parts of the ruins with another dry brushing of the original colours. For $10.99, this piece looks great and was my entry piece into using XOLK on my tables.

Now, some readers will recognize that is a product that I wrote about before. In my Post “Have You Ever Heard of XOLK?” I gave my initial thoughts of this very product, but at the time – I had not yet painted one. This product was quick to paint and one could easily get away with spray painting it black and a quick dry brush without using a wash or highlights as extra steps.

The details themselves are etched in nicely in the MDF. Some people told me that they thought I didn’t even need to paint the terrain piece up for the table. Personally, I like the piece better painted, but below are some images from the previous article of how the piece looks unpainted.

A look at an unpainted XOLK Cottage in Ruins.

Here we have some 40K miniatures using the structure for cover. Notice that there are some extra boards in the house. Those boards come with the model too. I painted them up and use them around the table as scatter terrain.

Another look at the Cottage with some Chaos Cultists using it as cover.

Again, I prefer the terrain piece painted. Below is a picture of the Ruined Cottage paired beside a XOLK 15th Century Urban Dwelling on a Frostgrave Board.

The MDF Scenery looks great on the table.

I find that this terrain has multiple uses as it fits in for Fantasy games as well as historical games in Europe. I really like that I can use the same product for both Bolt Action and Frostgrave. The fact that this piece can cross genres really makes it useful for my collection.

Being that XOLK is still a fairly new company, I urge you to check out their website and “Like” their Facebook Page. Also stay tuned to Must Contain Minis as there are a series of reviews of XOLK products that will be going up over the next few weeks.

These products are available at some stores in Quebec and Ontario and from XOLK’s website. My understanding is that they have good shipping rates for North America, but not as good for overseas. I do apologize to my European readers as you are potentially missing out on a good product here.

Until next time, Happy Gaming Everyone!!!