Category Archives: Wargame Scenery

Mantic Terrain Crate – First bits of painted scatter.

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Mantic Terrain Crate
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.
Mantic Terrain Crate Logs
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.
Mantic Terrain Crate, Hay Bales, Boxes, Crates
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.
Mantic Terrain Crate, Boxes, Crates
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.

Zombicide: Black Plague – Broken Walls

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Another real quick one today – it seems I forgot to post these back in April, though I did take the photo at the time. These are broken walls from the Zombicide Black Plague accessories pack (plastic tokens and whatnot).

I actually painted most of these last year sometime, and then (naturally) found two that had gotten missed. I don’t know how that sort of thing always manages to happen. (Those Shadows of Brimstone Tentacles had another bunch turn up recently, FFS!)

Anyway, they’re pretty simple. Too simple in fact, so I added some cat-litter-and-sand additional rubble. I left them all in grey to keep them nice and generic, and because adding weathering powders to this sort of glorified tokens would be a bit too far on the side of insane uses of my time. Here’s a photo to show the scale of these, in case I ever decide to use them in wargames, for which they’d be okay as movement-obstructing terrain or soft/light cover.