A few weeks ago I had my Mantic Terrain Crate Kickstarter pledge arrive. I basically got the “one of everything” pledge, so it was interesting to go through all of the bits and pieces, and see what came out nicely, what was warped and fixable, what was warped to hell, and what I could just start working on and knock out quickly and painlessly. Of course, I ended up mixing the pieces together without regard for which set they came from, since my intent was completely to work out which ones I wanted to paint first.

Logs are pretty simple, but they work for what they are. Sure, you could do much nicer and more detailed logs with real wood, but these are nice enough and easy to paint. So they work for me.

Similarly, bales of hay and wooden crates are fine. These single crates are detailed on 5 sides rather than 6, so they’ll always have the “grate” side on the top. I’m fine with that, but it’s just worth noting. The hay bales on the other hand are detailed on all six sides.

The multi-crate stacks are pretty decent as well. They’re like a similar but larger version of the old resin ones that were sold by Grendel (and probably others) since the 1990’s. They’re pretty solid bits of scatter and can be used as background stuff in many genres of game or even as objective markers. I gave some of the individual boxes in the stack some (very) subtle differentiation with extra glazes of Flesh, Soft and Strong Tone, but wanted to keep them all pretty similar. Just enough variation so that the viewer doesn’t notice the variation while also adding enough small difference so that you don’t consciously notice that they all look exactly the same. So while this might not be a super exciting post, and it’s certainly not a comprehensive review of the Terrain Crate stuff, but these pieces are the first that I’ve painted, and they’re all of solid quality – especially once painted. They’re not boutique resin-level quality, but for the price, they’re pretty nice. I’ll continue to offer my thoughts on the Terrain Crate stuff as I continue to work my way through them.