We stumbled across The Last Valley Scenics for the first time at Leeds Fiasco in October 2016 and spent a bit of pocket money on some of his scenery pieces. It was towards the end of our time at the show that we had a close look at his wares and we were in a rush so grabbed a few bits and pieces.
Back at EH Gaming HQ when we had a proper look at what we had bought we realised just how darn special his scenery items are. When Vapnartak in York rolled around a few months later we made a beeline to his stand…but we got there a couple of hours after the show had started, just before lunchtime and he was unique among the traders there in that he had practically sold out already!!
We did get a few more pieces though, but it was like a plague of locusts had been through his stall.
Yes folks, his stuff is that good. It’s amazing actually, and very, very fairly priced.
The Last Valley Scenics appears to be just one man who has dedicated his spare time to creating extremely realistic scenery comprising of trees, hedgerows, fields, fences, ponds, marshes, rivers and roads. The main materials used for his foliage based scenery is actually horsehair that normally gets used to stuff furniture. What he does with it and how he decorates it is immaculate. But it is not just the foliage; the trunks are very realistic and all of his pieces are really well based and instantly ready for the tabletop. Not just any tabletop though; this is tournament standard scenery. Here’s a few snaps of some of the pieces we are using…
I haven’t managed to find a website for The Last Valley but their is a Facebook page and a Flickr account, but if you see that he is trading at a show you are planning to go to then get there as early so you can and grab his stuff before he sells out.
I suspect that because everything is made by him and by hand that it would be difficult to run an actual online store or ecommerce website as it must takes weeks and weeks of work just to prepare everything for a show, never mind manage inventory for online orders.
Next time we know where he’s going to be we are taking some cash and stocking up on some fields and bocage scenery for future Bolt Action games as well as grabbing some more trees to go with what we have.
