Frontier Wargaming

Today I’m reviewing some MDF terrain from Frontier Wargaming!

This was a review that was a long time in coming! Thanks to a massive, months-long strike by our esteemed postal service, this arrived in the post in December after having being sent sometime in August. Frontier Wargaming were very helpful and understanding – even offering to send me another pack if I covered their postage.

They sent me the 4 watch towers plus landing pad bundle.

Sorry about the terrible cellphone pics… unfortunately both of my good cameras died!

Packing

I opened the package and was rewarded with the familiar scent of laser-burnt MDF. The components came packed in shrink-wrapped portions, with extraneous bits in a little baggie all neatly packed in a box. There were no instructions but a little sticker pointed you to the obvious: check the website for assembly instructions! Amazingly, the contents were in (almost) perfect condition despite the package having obvious signs of being thrown about by angry postal workers! One small component for a searchlight had been damaged, but considering the ordeal this lot had gone through getting to me – not bad.

Material Quality

Unlike almost every other MDF terrain I’ve come across, this stuff looks and feels like it would survive being left alone in the brutal hands of 40K players for weeks on end. It is pretty dense and solid, but of course is still fibrous. I didn’t manage to destroy any pieces whilst working with it in my usual heavy-handed way. I did however break a piece whilst packing up but this was certainly because it was not yet glued – I foolishly flexed the guard tower base too much and this caused it to break along the very narrow connectors in the centre. No fault of the material used, and easily repaired.

Assembly is child’s play

Assembly

All of the parts go together in a logical fashion, although it does pay to read the online instructions. There are no instruction sheets in the package, but a sticker pointing you to the website. This is hardly a minus in this day and age, and certainly anything that cuts down on unnecessary cost is a good thing. The online instruction is for a slightly older version of guard tower – the current one has a slot in the base to secure the ladder.

I did find the fit of the parts a little tight, but scraping the edges helped a lot when inserting into their slots. Some parts do need glue, but for the most part the fit is so tight you won’t need it. I would recommend it for some of the parts such as the armour panels. If you are worried about the bits moving around and coming loose then just go ahead and glue everything. The searchlights are quite a neat idea, although I managed to lose a piece (the gimbal) and consequently one guard tower is short a searchlight. It’s not hard to make a suitable replacement out of bits: I think I’ll make a radar array to fit in those searchlight arms.

After assembling the first guard tower, the second came along very quickly, and the third and the fourth. The landing pad was likewise quick to assemble, although some parts (the blast shields) were a little difficult to insert. Again, virtually no glue was needed. I hadn’t managed to finish painting this before I went on holiday, so I can’t really comment on that aspect. However, the smooth surfaces look like they will take paint very well and not soak up so much primer – a definite plus over the rougher MDF materials I’ve worked with.

Busted! The Knight spies a couple of Nomad interlopers

Details & Aesthetics

These look right at home on a savage jungle planet, with rampaging dinosaurs looking to topple over watchtowers and pluck tasty tasty manflesh from the bendy metal bits. I can see a T-Rex gnawing at these things for half an hour and coming away empty handed (not that their hands are that big). The watchtowers in particular have a Morat feel to them. I can almost see Morats laughing as PanO prisoners are forced to clean the latrines.

For me, the searchlights perfectly set off these terrain pieces. They conjure images of special forces slinking through the base perimeter, intent on causing mischief. It’s little touches that create atmosphere like these that really make a terrain piece.

At a stretch, you could put these on a 40K battlefield, and provided you don’t cover it with unpainted or black-undercoated gothic ruins, these should fit right in.

GET TO DA SHUTTLE!!!!

In-Game Usage

The landing pad, whilst a little too small to accommodate massive 40K fliers, is perfect for small “executive” sized aircraft and hover vehicles like the Devilfish. Topo’s papercraft Chickenhawk manages to just fit onto the pad. I see this as a plus since most landing pads create a dead zone around and underneath them. You can easily stick this on a large MDF building and it would look at home. The staircase is perfectly sized for 28mm models, and broad enough for pretty much anything including a 55mm diameter base. Some special resin bases though, may be a too thick to slot in, but this isn’t too great of an issue.

The guard towers themselves are well sized to take large-based models or multiple 25mm base models, so that they can be of real use in games where squads are the basic element. The unusual angled panels are a little problematic in that there is a ~20cm blindspot around the base from the models, but I don´t think this is a real problem. There should be some way to deal with guard towers close up. The angled panels in fact create more volume for models to fit in, especially your more dynamically posed Infinity examples. Too many times I´ve had problems where “HMG bro-fist” won´t fit properly and dies horribly as a result. Overall, very pleased with the design of both although I do wish the pad was a little bit larger.

The pad is also very easy to pretty up. As it is not too detailed, it’s easy to use a large brush and paint in the panels quickly. I also pushed some cheap Xmas LED lights into the gaps between those armoured panels and made a fantastic centrepiece.

Would I Recommend It?

Most of the MDF terrain available today is pretty good and I have no bad things to really say about any of the stuff I’ve used. It’s difficult for MDF terrain to be particularly spectacular, or conversely offer especially good value for money. But I think Frontier Wargaming’s stuff occupies a comfortable position in the value for money and ease of build categories. The helpful staff are probably the best thing about ordering an overseas product direct, and I value that above all else.  I have no problems recommending this, and from what Frontier Wargaming has previewed, I think this will be an excellent source of Infinity-themed terrain pretty soon.