JTFM Trench System Review

 When looking at trench terrain for WWI gaming, there are three or four different approaches.  Best looking is custom-made trench boards, as featured in glossy wargaming magazine articles and fancy wargame rule books.  I was even motivated to make a set of trench boards some 15 years ago.  They look great, but have a big drawback in that they are huge, a giant hassle to move around, which makes taking them to the club for a game near impossible, and they are pretty limited in how they can be reconfigured for different scenarios.  

Making smaller pieces is an option, using 6" x 6" tiles for example, but these still tend to be bulky, taking up a lot of storage space, and are still a great deal of work to build.  I suppose could arguably just draw trenches on paper for a two-dimensional representation, but that is very unsatisfactory when considering the effort that I put into making the miniatures look nice!

So that leaves resin trenches.  These lack a bit of realism as they raise above the table instead of being cut below the surface, but as long as all the gamers are willing to go with what is intended, resin pieces have a few advantages.  Resin pieces are easy to store and transport, they can be moved and set up in different configurations as needed for various scenarios. They need to be painted but otherwise no other modelling work needed, and for me the saving in time to build them compensate for a great deal.  And realistically, if I were to attempt to build my own, I'd easily spend much more than the cost of individual resin pieces.

With all that in mind, I decided to purchase the JTFM/Die Waffenkammer trench system.  Information on the website is pretty limited, so here is some information about what you get with the package deal.

The system includes one each of seven different pieces, totaling around 3' in total, although with with bends and junctions, a bit less than that on the table.

The trench pieces follow, with Great War Miniatures for scale.

Trench end piece

Short straight section

Longer straight section

T-section

Mortar pit

Dogleg section

Bunker with removable roof.

These trenches are not very deep, only about 1" or 25 mm, and just barely room for a 25 mm base.  The figures on 20 mm bases fit much better!

The trenches are definitely not compatible with the old Acheson Creations trenches that I picked up years ago!  

These trenches are going to meet my WWI gaming needs quite nicely, so much so that I placed an order with Jeff to send me some more pieces to allow some more table coverage.  I'll paint them up and add another post in the new year.