The last set for a little while from my Dungeons and Lasers Woodhaven Kickstarter pledge. This set has four sets – two sci-fi and two more fantasy-themed.
A bit of an odd way to do them – both will work for 40k-ish gaming, but the stone ones don’t work so well for more tech-oriented sci-fi, even Necromunda, and obviously the sci-fi steps aren’t going to be super useful for fantasy and D&D players. They’re fine for me since I play across genres, but it’s still an …interesting way to lump them together.
The kit comes with two of each, though opening the kit up and clipping them off the sprue shows that there’s not a whole lot to either type.
The fantasy ones are a lot more substantial when compared to the sci-fi ones. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed by the sci-fi steps.
The sci-fi stairs also had a consistent sinkhole at the base of the stands. I dropped some “Extra Thick” Tamiya Plastic Cement (aka Sprue Goo), and later scraped away to make them somewhat even. I did my usual stippling of AK Easycast Texture Medium to add texture to the stone of the fantasy stairs.
My verdict? The sci-fi stairs are a disappointment. They’re small and not especially stable. Even for a game you’d want to blu-tac them to whatever they’re being attached to for that game, and they don’t have the “perch a model on them” gimmick that the Wooden Town Stairs Set had. The fantasy stairs are unexciting but solid, and by far the better model from the two types in this set. If you can get these cheap – and have use for both types – then by all means pick these up, but keep your expectations quite …reserved and you won’t be disappointed.
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
They’ve come out well! 🙂 Look like they’re more designed to give the appearance of steps in a game rather than be more functional (since you can’t stand a figure on them)!
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Definitely. They’re very much a “start from the ground, measure move distance, and up you go (or not)” set of pieces. 🙂
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Nice paint jobs but I can see why you found the sci fi sets a bit underwhelming.
Cheers,
Pete.
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It’s almost a ladder!
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You have painted them well, but thanks for the “heads up”.
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Cheers mate. The stone stairs are decent at least…
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You’re painting of them is excellent mate, even if the product is lacking.
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Thank you, Dave! 🙂
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Looking good mate, even if a bit flimsy
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Just don’t sneeze near the sci-fi steps and you’ll be okay. Or exhale in their direction.
😮
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😂
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They look great with your paints on them. I get the impression that they are meant to be glued to other scenery bits, but then that make storage trickier. It does seem really weird to include SciFi and Fantasy stairs in the same set, as I’m sure someone is run into “I need more Fantasy stairs…but now I need to buy both!”. I imagine some of the SciFi stairs might end up for cheap on eBay because of that.
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They give that implication in some ways, but at the same time, Archon’s stuff is also sold as “take it apart-stick it together” modular terrain, so they’re really in a nether region between the two. A lot of their KS extras have ended up shared between genres in a way that would work well for a campaign, but with little forward thought to bring the sprues to retail and a wider market later.
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Reminds me of Mantics Deadzone, where they also touted that you could snap them pieces together. But as we know, that was about as stable as a house of cards. Hopefully Archons is better than that!
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Archon has some heavy-duty clips that seem like they’ll work – but let’s face it – Mantic’s terrain clips were/are atrocious! They’re mediocre but managable for permanent terrain, but as something to Lego together and apart and into different configurations… not so much.
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Interesting review, and of course beautifully painted as usual, the Sci/fi ones are the more interesting (to me) of the two, they are both pretty steep looking but in a limited space they could work rather nicely.
Cheers Roger.
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Cheers Roger – if you were to glue them down for a permanent solution attached to a building, they’d be fine – if not, you’d need to blu-tac them and they’d lilely be okay. 🙂
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Some curious design decisions there to be sure but they do look nice on the table which is probably just as important as function for this sort of thing. You’re doing a great job knocking out terrain lately, mate.
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Thanke mate. I did a lot of prep work over the past two months, but not as much time to paint as I would have liked – plus I made thge conscious decision to get at least some of the recently-arrived Archon stuff assembled and painted quickly rather than throwing it into the backlog pile…
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