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Review of Terrain Crate: Adventurers' Crate
Blurb from the publisher: 'Your party meets in a local tavern.The task is simple; the town guard are irrevocably corrupt and rumour has it that they have confiscated a map leading to an ancient treasure. You break into their barracks in the dead of night and steal it for yourselves - but none of you can make out the forgotten language the map is written in. You take the map to an infamously eccentric bookkeeper, who consults with dusty tomes to translate the writing, in exchange for a share of the treasure. The final location is revealed - the ruins of the Temple of Mescator. Who knows what awaits you there?"
This crate bundle includes a varied array of 68 scenery pieces designed for use in your own tabletop role-playing games!
The scale is 28-30 mm, making the 68 pieces perfect for many fantasy and historical games. The pieces are cast in high quality plastic and are preassembled, ready to play straight out of the box.'
What you get: Your GBP 59,99 will buy you Terrain Crate: Adventurers' Crate, a 68-piece plastic set with furniture, weapon racks, marble pillars and other materials that are usually associated with locations adventurers are likely to visit. Adventurers' Crate is part of the Terrain Crate series which nowadays consists of five items, plus all the Small and Large Crates. We have visited practically all these items together.
The pieces come in three colours depending on what they depict. Cupboards and book racks are mostly brown. Anything that relates to marble like pillars, fountains, decorative ground designs etc are white. Finally, luxury armchairs and carpets are chaki in colour.
It is worth pointing out that some of the contents of this set can be found in certain Small Sets and Large Sets of the same series. Large Sets retail for GBP 24,99 each and are more focused than the present set. In other words, they include more items which are linked to a more specific function of a location, and are not as broad as the present set. Idem for the Small Sets which retail for GBP 7,99, yet they include even less items. The marble-like items are currently not contained in any of the sets.
The strong points: There is no question about Mantic's sculpts by now. It doesn't matter if you want to dress an indoors or outdoors environment, this box contains enough materials for either.
Like every other set in the line, the material is excellent. No assembly is needed. And on top of that, everything already has a colour that the least discerning amongst us would not mind keeping if you are pressed for time and you need to field them now. In the long term however, one can work wonders with adding details on the marble items, the book racks and even the simple beds. What is maturing in that barrel and what colour should the wood be? The box's contents are extremely diverse. There are items befitting kings, and others which are most likely to be found at the servants' quarters. There are trappings straight out from a military academy, and others out of a wizards' cabal. Admittedly it would be overkill to use all of them simultaneously in the same diorama (something that is possible with other items in the line), the truth of the matter however is that they cover a lot of bases. This, in fact, appears to be the marketing principle behind the box.
The detail on all the items goes below millimetre level. Even the marbles look real and life-like. I'd love to glaze that fountain and give it the falling water treatment. This, however, is a project for the future.
The items' versatility extends to both tme periods as well as genres. Marbles go pretty much anywhere, the more war-oriented items however would suit well every era from the Roman times to the advent of gunpowder. The barrels and the carpets can be used in numerous historical periods, as can the simple chairs, benches and wooden stools.
Taking the price of our hobby into account, the set comes as a very fair deal, at an average of less than GBP 1 per piece. This is by far better than the ratio of either the Large Sets or the Small Sets in the series, even though one might need one or two of the other sets here and there in order to enrich this environment. The pieces are not born equal and one can't compare a huge table to a single ladder, that's however in favour of the set, not against it.
The box has an internal plastic insert which mostly keeps the items in place. Mostly. It doesn't reach absolute perfection, it is however a much better and more desirable solution than throwing all of these items together in a box without any protection. Depending on how much you are into minis, and in case you don't have soft transport cases, you might want to keep the packaging for a while.
The weak points: When it comes to quality, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this set. This is plastic, it has different qualities to resin, and everybody knows this in advance. All the items seem sturdy, and some bent parts can be easily fixed without much effort.
Admittedly this is the weakest of the Terrain Crate game line when it comes to the cohesiveness of what it contains. The name has absolutely nothing to do with the contents and might even come out as misleading. What do the Greek-like pillars and marble ground decorations have to do with a weapon rack, a bow target, and a pile of books? How do mirrors and armchairs fit in with beds which look as if taken from flea-infested inns? The selection is rather disparate, in that it looks as if it tries to fix holes in your miniature trappings collection, instead of presenting something that makes sense. This doesn't reduce the value of the product, it certainly however reduces its desirability, seeing how most of us pay big money for something that relates to a theme. Clearly, there is no overarching theme here. If you want some marble-like pillars, be certain that you simultaneously wish to invest on seven cupboards, a couple of braziers, and barrels, amongst others.
Conclusion: Terrain Crate: Adventurers' Crate is yet another solid offer of decorations that will satisfy the most demanding of gamers. It looks and feels extremely haphazard as a collection when compared to its siblings, at the end of the day however let's be honest. If you have these minis at your disposal, you will create the right place to use them at.
To find out more about Terrain Crate: Adventurers' Crate, visit Mantic's website at http://www.manticgames.com.
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