Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Bandua Wargames Q-Buildings Pack - Review

I’ve now got the Bandua Wargames Q-Building Set assembled, so this will be a continuation of the unboxing post I put up earlier.
Overall, the buildings were very easy to assemble. After I had watched the assembly video during my unboxing (all of Bandua's assembly videos for the Alpha Series can be found here) all the buildings followed the same assembly format, so I didn't need to refer to any assembly instructions to put the other buildings together.
The pieces all slot together smoothly and the joins between each piece are quite snug, and after a bit of PVA are very secure.

Here is the completed set, with some 28mm miniatures for scale

A close-up of the doors, which fit into their tight in their frames and don't fall out

Here are the buildings stacked on top of each other to make a three story structure

My only gripe is that the L Building, once stacked on the XL Building,
has a door leading to nowhere. In this photo I've taken the doors out to
emphasise the design flaw

The L Building stored inside the XL Building

The S Building stored in the L Building, which is still inside the XL Building

Conclusion

Overall I'm very happy with the product, and I'm very glad I picked up two other sets to fill out my Infinity table with.
  • The simplistic design elements of the buildings made for quick and easy assembly, and the basic geometric shapes of the buildings will make determining LOS/LOF during play very straight forward.
  • Apart from 'the door to nowhere' created by stacking the L Building on the XL Building (which I won't be doing for my tables!) the stacking works quite well - I can still stack the S Building on the L Building or the XL Building, giving me a bit more variety in my tabletops
  • Storage for the pieces is great, and works as I had expected from videos and reviews I had seen online
The major complaint I read online about this set is that the buildings were quite plain, which I do agree with. But given my preference for simple, geometric and functional terrain, I actually see this a positive feature. I like my terrain to have clear-cut corners - Infinity has enough surprises with AD Jump Troops and TO Camo models that the last thing I need to hear is "Oh, actually this Total Reaction Spitfire guy has LOF on that order".
If you don't mind the simple design, then I'd highly recommend this set.

Sync out.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Warsenal Barricades - Unboxing

Earlier in the year, a friend of mine was doing an order from Warsenal, for their awesome Infinity Templates. I took the opportunity to order up five sets of their Barricades to add to my terrain collection.


At USD$3 for the set of four walls, I couldn't resist! I thought they would make a great-looking, cheap option for cover.


Unboxing

The sets come in a snap-seal plastic bag, which seems pretty standard for MDF terrain these days.



Here are the contents of each set. Two long walls, two short walls and six stands.



And here they are assembled, which took the better part of one minute to snap the stands to the walls. The snap fits aren't very snug, so I'll need to glue them together for the pieces to be solid.



And here is a shot for scale against a 28mm miniature for scale.



Conclusion

I really like these pieces of terrain - simple to assemble, cheap and look great on a sci-fi table. Not really much more to say, but here are some thoughts:
  • At USD$3 for four walls they are very well priced, and a solid option for some table filler terrain
  • The designs, while basic, will fit in with many other ranges of MDF terrain available
  • It would be nice if the stands 'snap-fit' snuggly into the wall pieces so that I didn't have to get the glue out, but that comment probably speaks more to my laziness than any fault in the product
I've decided not to follow up this Unboxing Post with a Review, simply because there isn't much more to say - it's simple, functional and great looking sci-fi terrain.

Sync out.