Review Summary: What is a boat good for, if you don't have the jetty to reach it?
Blurb from the publisher: 'The straight jetty is laser-cut from high-quality, prepainted MDF boards. It has a length of about 14 cm, is about 6,3 cm wide and about 4,1 cm high. The catwalk is 3,2 cm high. The straight jetty can be combined with several other jetties and the angle jetty, on a lake, to form beautiful water landscapes.
The angle section jetty is laser-cut from high-quality, prepainted MDF boards. It has a length of about 13 cm, is about 6,3cm wide and about 4.7cm high. The catwalk is 3,5 cm high. The angle jetty can be combined with several other jetties and the straight jetty, on a lake, to form beautiful water landscapes. '
What you get: This is a review of two different products: the GEL001 Jetty (straight section) and the GEL002 Jetty (angle section) for Freebooter's Fate, the diceless, pirate-theme miniatures wargame from Werner Klocke. Each jetty can be purchased individually for EUR 9,50 each. Alternatively, one can purchase a Jetty Set with three jetties of each type for only EUR 39. That is a discount of almost 33% for those six jetties. Each jetty is painted dark brown and comes unassembled. The straight jetty is comprised of 12 pieces, while the angled jetty of 9. Depending on if and how how you decide to treat them, the number of pieces might actually increase.
For the purposes of this review I only had access to one Jetty of each type.
The strong points: If you have the Freebooter's Fate Ocean Mat and the Freebooter's Fate Islands, it logically follows that you need some jetties. The customization possiblities are endless, especially if you decide to spend more money than usual and create a harbor swarming with activity. Irrespective of what you need the jetties for, I flat out recommend the Set over buying individual ones. Happy as I am with the two I used for this review, the amount of dioramas they allow me to set is a bit limited.
The jetties themselves look gorgeous, with very vivid details on their external sides (not on the internal sides however). They really look like planks fixed next to one another, all weathered by the elements and about to collapse. They even have small punch out sections in order to give the impression of gaps due to old age. The angle jetty can also double up as torn down/abandoned jetty in a far-off mystery island. One can assemble them and keep them unglued, a case in which one has to be attentive about the weight he puts on them and how he places or removes his miniatures during the game. This approach allows for easier storing, when the jetties are not used. The jetties can also be glued, if you decide to have them as part of a more permanent fixture, if you can afford the storage space that is.
It goes without saying that the jetties are built with the miniatures of Freebooter's Fate in mind. Anything at that size plus minus a few milimetres will work just fine.
The weak points: I consider myself a rather average miniatures handler, i.e. I am not pig-fingered and can stand my ground when it comes to scenery construction. In this case, I injured the components a handful of times, while I seriously damaged one of them in two different places. That is not due to negligence or lack of tools. Unfortunately, the engineering behind the creation of the components is not adequate. Some of the punch out pieces enclosed by the jetties' components are so small that it is practically impossible to take them out in a clean way without needing to retouch the component afterwards. Second, even though the pieces are well documented and the instructions detail assembly, they do not describe at all something critical: how to take them off from the MDF pieces. This sounds like a rather naive request, yet here is the thing: if one removes the usable components before dislocating the punch out pieces, that latter process will become exponentially more difficult. At times twisting and turning works much more easily than applying pressure, something however that is again not obvious. My advice: use tools to take them off. You will not regret it.
The component that I seriously damaged while taking it off its sprue was one of the two support beams for the straight jetty. I can take partial responsibility for one of these damages, yet the other one is simply bad design. There is this single pressure point where the whole component is extremely thin and flimsy. Thankfully, none of these breaks ruined the product beyond reparation. I was able to fix everything, and by the time of the playtest my jetty looked as good as new. The previous damage wasn't even noticeable, unless one knew where to look. I admit however that had I paid for the copy I would have not been amused whatsoever.
All that having been said, and with all this damage caused, I had spent over an hour in order to punch out these two jetties and clean up the places where they touched the sprews. This is an insane amount of time for such a piece of scenery. I don't know how things good be improved; my first thought would be for the laser engravings to be far deeper and allow for the pieces to practically fall out with minimal pressure. Something however needs to be done.
Conclusion: There is no discussion about how gorgeous each Freebooter's Fate Jetty will look on your set, especially if you decide to paint it after you assemble it. Until one gets there however there is quite some tedious work to be done, at least the way the whole thing is currently engineered, and always, under the fear of actually ruining the product. It shouldn't have been like that. This little piece of scenery will have tremendous potential if it becomes easier to handle.
For more info on the Freebooter's Fate Jetty and Freebooter's Fate overall, visit the company's website at www.freebooterminiatures.de.
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