Battlefield in a Box Review

Hi,

Well it's been a while since my last post, and for those waiting for the battle reports from my last tournaments they are still in the pipe line and will be appearing eventually.

Today I decided that I will definitely buy the tables so I can have a gaming table at home.  I have an a Cities of Death boxset with a few ruins, some barracades and various pieces of terrain I've picked up from ebay a few years ago, but I needed a few more pieces to fill a table.  While browsing in my local games store I came accross the Gale Force Nine Battlefield In A Box Range.  The idea is that the terrain is already assembled, painted to a gaming standard and ready to use straight out of the box.  This is a refreshing change from GW, and is perfect for any of us who find it hard to fit in time to paint our armies let alone terrain pieces.

I decided to pick up a set of small pine trees and a box of crystals.

Turnng the box over showed the exact contents of the box:

The tree boxset contained 14 trees spread over 6 bases along with 2 large bases

The crystal boxset contained 10 assorted crystal formations.

Opening both boxes they were very well packaged.  Each collection of threes had it's own plastic section, and the large bases were each in a plastic bag packed within polystrene:

30 sections later I had a 2 forests that I could put straight on a gaming table:

The boxset also contained a bag of flock in case I wanted to spend a small amount of time to improve the forests to make them look like the ones of the cover of the box.  Alternatively I could use other flock (such as snow) to match my army.

The crytals were just as well packaged.  The packaging in both box sets was so good I'll probably use them to store the terrain between games.  Again 30 second after opening the box I had a nice array of crystals for my Dark Eldar to fight over (I'm tempted to turn a few of the small crystals into objective markers).

You couldn't ask for better packaging

Whether they clumped to getter to block LOS for infantry or spaced out to give cover as they advance this terrain would improve a game

Price wise the trees boxset was 50p more than GW's trees, but you got 2 forests rather than one, and the forests are painted, and it would only take half an hour to flock them to make them look as good as anything you'd see in a gaming store.

GW's Tree boxset offering

Overall I really rate this terrain range, and I'll probably pop back for a set of swamps, and if I didn't already have lots of terrain I could probably pick up some of their other sets which include ruins, elven pillars/ruins, ponds, river sections, tank traps and more.

For those of you that live near Reading in the UK, Eclectic Games sells a large selection of the range.  They also offer a 5% discount to Spiky club members, and that's on top of their loyalty card.  So I got both the forests and the crystals for less than £31 (instead of £32.50) plus 3 tenths of my loyalty card filled (which gives £10 credit once filled).  Compared to buying 2 games workshop forests (for £34) and then having to paint them I think is was a good buy.

For those not near Reading, UK, the Gale Force Nine products are sold via many webstores such as Wayland Games in the UK, where you can get them cheaper than the amount I paid (but I like to occassionly support my local store).

Until next time.

Rathstar

PS. Battle reports are coming soon, I must get them done as I have another tournament, Compliance II, coming up in 4 days.