Errant Dukes - Resin Crates, Barrels and Objective Markers - A Review

Hey all,

Something a little different today! I recently got my hands on some nifty little bits of scenery and today I'm just going to take a look at them. These are just in their cleaned resin state so far, but as time allows I'll be putting some paint on them to use in games and I'll show them off once they are all painted up as well.

Errant Dukes is a little resin scenery start up company that I mentioned some time ago, but now they have a CrowdFunder up and running if you want to check out other upcoming stuff and put some dosh down. But for now lets just look at what they've got!

Barrels

The barrels come in at a nice height next to a marine, including the Primaris marines, with the advent of 8th edition cover, I will probably be putting these on bases as a form of area terrain, which while limiting in terms of deployment, will maximise the cover mechanic in games I play. Stacking the barrels give you the potential for complete line of sight blocking terrain for smaller models, particularly if used in conjunction with other bits of terrain like barricades.

Each Barrel comes with crisp logo detail on them for flammable substances, biohazard waste etc as you can see below:

Each set of 5 barrels costs around £5 including postage and packaging, but they only charge 25p for each additional item on their eBay store so each additional set only costs £3.75 (£3.50 base). I personally think that is great value!

However, the ones I really like are the objective marker barrels, nicely numbered and because of their cylindrical shape they are dead easy to measure from the centre of the objective. Incidentally I will be mounting these on 150mm bases. This will make it easy to measure how many models are within the 3inches of the objective centre as you'll just count the models that are on the base, easier than cracking out the tape measure if its a close call!

Crates

The crates come in a variety of sizes with one blank, undetailed side for sitting on, this is nice as it kind of forces your hand in how you stack them and means you end up with crates on their short side, so standing nice and tall. I can see that some people might prefer texture on all the sides, but for me this doesn't really bother me at all.

The crates are priced similarly to the barrels but go up or down in price depending on size. Five small square crates come in at £2.50 + PP and the largest crates, such as the one on the right standing up cost £4.50 + PP for two plus a long thin crate standing on its short end.

The crates also come in an objective marker variety which I actually prefer to the barrels, just because they are super clear to read and I know that sometimes you end up look at your objectives going - which one is that again!?

Overall

I really like the pieces that Errant Dukes are currently producing and they have more plans in the offering! If you check out their Crowdfunder you'll see that £20 can get you a very nice selection of both fantasy crates as I have here and also sci-fi crates that they have in the works. I will personally be pledging for some of the sci-fi crates for some additional variety to what I already have.

I am a big fan of smaller companies producing wargaming materials and the like, as I feel they very often fill distinct niches in the market. I think the level of detail Errant Dukes offers is extremely good for the price. So I encourage you to go have a look at them either on their Crowdfunder or through their eBay store :)

Peace out,

Rob

MDF Terrain! TTCombat Buildings - Mini-review

Hey all,

I've been taking time to actually build terrain for once! This is truly a miracle of the modern age ;) I purchased about £60 worth of MDF terrain from the Troll Trader on eBay, which is sold under the brand of TTCombat. I've built roughly £40 worth of that purchase and wanted to show it off before it gets a lick of paint. 

This stuff will be getting a simple paintjob. Textured paint, sprayed black and drybrushed grey before a matt varnish. I just want to get something up and running to give me a decent variety of terrain to play on at home. 

Also, for reference, the mat the terrain is shown on is from Urban Matz and is their Badlands design :)

First off, this is the size of the box that the terrain is currently stored in and can be condensed down too, so it fits very nicely under the bed and takes up very little space as well. This is pretty crucial for me as I live in a one bedroom flat with my (very) understanding girlfriend Serena. As much as I would love a dedicated game room, that simply isn't going to happen for a very long time... if ever!

Here is an aerial view of mat with all of the terrain laid out. I think this is a pretty impressive coverage for about £40 worth of terrain I must say! This took me probably in the region of 3 hours to build all of it, just using PVA glue to hold it together. 

Here you can see two heavy support marines from the Sons of Horus in the middle of the field and also perched in a ruined building. Good cover and line of fire to be had!

Here you can see my knight and a krios venator trying there best to hide themselves! The knight doesn't have much to cover himself, but the venator hides himself quite well. 

A vorax can hide behind one of the outbuilding easily and as you can see the ceilings are removable so you can fit a squad of up to 5 marines on 32mm bases inside the building I believe. The windows give a nice shooting gallery for any marines inside, but they also allow shooting inward, albeit with a cover save. 

You could easily use these as actual building with hull points and blow them up if you wanted too. 

The central building also has a removable roof, and as you can see this makes them very useful for storing the little odds and sods from the kit. The barriers really help add little bits of cover throughout the buildings. 

The entire set condenses nicely and you can see the whole set back in its box!

I'm very happy with my purchase overall, and once I have the final amount of terrain built I will have more scatter terrain to provide cover including tank traps and storage containers. Additionally I will be building four walkway sets which will give a nice amount of elevation to the entire battlefield. 

The sets have little bits and bobs of machined detailing all about, but as I'm painting these incredibly simply, I believe these will be covered up, but you could easily pick them out nicely if you wanted to. I thoroughly recommend the TTCombat range, they are relatively simple to build and overall great value for money.

Peace out,

Rob

Laser Cut Candy - An FAQ with Mario Ruf

Hey gang,

So sometime ago I reviewed some awesome laser cut gubbins from ML Shield. Well the lovely young chap Mario who runs ML shields out of his university has put together an FAQ video for you to get some more insight into what he does and what goes on. A really nice guy, give a watch and be inspired :) you can find his facebook page here!

Peace out,

Rob

GameMat.EU - Terrain and Mat Review!

Hey gang,

Today I'm going to be reviewing some products from GameMat.EU that I received before Christmas. These have formed the mainstay of my new gaming table at home which has been great! I played a game of Heresy last night and I took some pictures without armies and with armies on the table to give you a general idea of how they look and how they scale next to models, including some big ones!

For reference the sets I bought were the pre-painted industrial terrain and the Forges of Mars mat. I also bought another mat, but I am going to look at that at a separate time :)

With no additional terrain, you can see that with a single terrain set you get a very fair coverage of the whole battlefield, and the mat is just as excellent a quality as you might expect. It is like a thick mouse mat, with a high quality, high definition image on top.  

The terrain is painted to a tabletop standard, but it looks absolutely fantastic and there are no raised bumps from any kind of brush stroke or the like, the effect is fantastic in game. You could further enhance this terrain by adding extra little scenic pieces around the bottom as certain YouTube channels like Table Top Tactics have done. 

Despite having four of these containers, I managed to place all of them on their side in this game as you can see by the sideways shutters.. D'oh!!! The containers are really excellent though. Each piece of terrain in the set is made of very solid resin pieces glued together, so they are durable but not super heavy as they are hollow. I don't pack them away in bubble wrap or the like, just packed in a box and slid under the bed. 

The little crates are really excellent bits of character terrain that provide a cover save to infantry but otherwise just provide obstacle to move around.

This is the largest piece in the set and generally gets used as a centre piece to the board as it makes an excellent line of sight blocking piece of terrain.

Here is an aerial view of the whole table, showing the sand reclaimed forge in all its glory.

The Infernus (two of them!) are super heavy tanks, and you can see that they are equal to the height of the pipes and some way off the cargo containers. (You can also probably guess which side of the sofa is mine...) 

The cargo containers, easily hide this medusa behind them!

And a rhino!

Ed, my opponents very cool converted Word Bearers Dreadnought.

In the distance you can see the cargo containers are the height of an old school land raider proteus and the centre piece is tall enough to hide contemptor dreadnoughts behind. 

The small generators also provide excellent line of sight blocking terrain for smaller vehicles, but their footprint is such that it isn't too over bearing in terms of sight blocking overall from the set. 

A contemptor plays peek-a-boo...

And my (very brave) command squad hides out behind a cargo container, easily hidden!

Overall

I could not be happier with these purchases to be honest!! The terrain is so good at line of sight blocking, which I find a rarity overall on tables that I play and I really enjoy it! It was also great to just be able to open up a box and put the terrain straight down on the battlefield without having to paint it up. I think the additional cost of buying the pre-painted terrain is very worthwhile if you aren't a terrain hobbyist like myself. Though it is worth noting you can buy all of GameMat.EU's terrain unpainted in resin.

The mat I think speaks for itself, its very characterful, with time given over to points of interest, rather than just a repeating pattern or style. The forges of mars mat is limited though so grab them while you can if you like it!

I plan on buying more of their pre-painted terrain sets when I can afford to splurge a little. I have played on some of their other sets though at Winters SEO's house and you can see them appear in his battle reports. Playing on those was what settled the decision to invest in their products!

I hope you found this review interesting and look forward to looking at the other mat that I procured :)

Peace out,

Rob