Terrain, terrain. My kingdom for terrain. It’s no secret I love a good set of terrain, even more if it caters my other hobbies: being lazy, not finishing sentences, and
So when Snot Goblin Gaming reached out to ask if I’d like to take a look at their upcoming FutureProof: Fully Painted Terrain, you best bet that I jumped at the opportunity. If you haven’t seen this terrain before, then check out our review of the unpainted version. Spoilers for that review: the unpainted version is great, and it gets an easy recommendation. We even put together painting, kitbashing, and Necromunda-izing guides for it.
If, however, your eyes glaze over at the thought of painting an entire table of terrain, I understand. I, too, am perpetually short on free time. So what if Snot Goblin Gaming met you halfway? You handle the (honestly quite fun) job of LEGO-esque assembling the terrain, but they take care of the painting. Well, that’s what you get with their new line of prepainted terrain.
Build and Rebuild
As you can see in this video (click to watch), this terrain assembles fast. Real fast. Fast like “build an entire table of terrain while you wait for the pizza to get delivered.” Building a FutureProof ruin takes less time than it does for my freshly deployed code to break on a Friday afternoon. Yeah, it’s that fast.
And just like my code, FutureProof ruins are riddled with broken walls, boarded windows, and bullet holes. My git commits may say “edge case optimizations,” but my heart says “I gave it a college try.” A college try, of course, being a half-assed attempt while watching SG-1 and playing TF2. And that’s coincidentally the same amount of effort it takes to build these FutureProof ruins.
If this particular style of ruins isn’t your jam, that’s fine. It’s actually one of the cool things about this terrain. There are a bunch of variants available, which let your battlefields have the same mechanical balance, but a entirely different theme.
And just so you know I’m not blowing smoke, below is a FutureProof ruin that I painted for our painting guide. Go ahead, do an A/B test and compare the one below to the prepainted ruins above. It’s extremely comparable, and the biggest difference between the two is that it took a bunch of time and effort to paint the below, and it took me maybe a few minutes to assemble the above.
Needless to say I’m not salty. Not salty at all that I spent so much time painting terrain, only for Snot Goblin Gaming to build a set that looks every bit as good right out of the box. Not salty at all.
I’m a little salty.
Durable Like a Durango
The big question though is, how well does it hold up? The postal service is a cruel mistress, and the grubby fingers of players are even crueler. Clattering dice, dropped minis, spilled drinks: with all the hazards of tabletop gaming, how well can you expect this terrain to hold up?
Very, very well.
It’s hard for me to overstate how stupidly durable this fully painted terrain is. I spoke with Snot Goblin Gaming about it, and they mentioned they weren’t able to scratch the paint, even intentionally.
And I took that personally.
I wasn’t playing nice in this video. That wasn’t camera tricks or smoke-and-mirrors. I was intentionally trying to rub it off, scratch it with a fingernail, and finally straight up keying that terrain like a jilted lover keys a car. I even had to reshoot that video a couple times to get the framing just right, so you’re watching like the fifth attempt at scratching it. And it’s 100% good as new.
Needless to say, this paint is not coming off. I can only speculate what dark magicks were used in its creation. I fear at least one chaos god was involved, possibly more. Whatever it was, it works wonders.
WaaC or Wack?
A large portion of Warhammer players are all about that competitive grind. They eat resin miniatures for breakfast. They drink enamel paints for lunch. They are dead by dinner. Don’t eat the paint, kids.
But how does this terrain stack up for competitive play? How close to the current, Pariah Nexus, tournament layouts can you get? Speaking from experience of setting up my personal gaming table, pretty dang close.
This isn’t even the Fully Painted terrain. This is my own personal stash of unpainted FutureProof terrain which I horde like the hobby-goblin that I am. I roughly measured out the terrain for Pariah Nexus Layout 1, threw some objective markers down, and called it good. Right before my next game I’ll more precisely measure and adjust the terrain, but even as-is, it’s plenty good enough for a game.
When’s The Other Shoe Dropping?
With all this praise, what are the downsides? Honestly, there aren’t many, and they’re no different from the downsides we mentioned in our review of the unpainted version. If you’re the type of hobbyist who wants to intricately design every aspect of a battlefield to tell a tailored tale, then these push-fit pieces might not be for you.
If you like the unique designs of traditional plastic terrain kits from companies like Games Workshop, and are looking for iconic battlefield terrain like a Haemotrope Reactor or a Skull Altar, you’re not going to find that here. But that’s self-evident, if you’re looking at FutureProof ruins, it’s cause you want ruins that are, well, future-proof. And that’s what you’re getting here.
Another sticking point is that, while there is a good variety of prints available, they all feel very grimdark and Warhammer 40k-ey. As a 40k player, that’s a positive. But as someone dabbling in Age of Sigmar, these ruins would look a bit odd in the mortal realms. Not egregious, to be sure. They’d certainly do the job and be perfectly suitable terrain. But I’d love to see some designs with more fantastical elements. Throw a rat on there, yes-yes.
There’s one point I need to bring up, just for due diligence. The copy of FutureProof: Fully Painted I’m review is an early preproduction unit. And one of the things that bugged me a bit are that the interior corners are unpainted. In person, it’s nowhere near as apparent as it is in these photos, but it still raised an eyebrow. I asked Snot Goblin Gaming about this, and this is something they’re looking into changing for the final product. And even if it doesn’t change at all, I really don’t mind it much. Once it’s on the battlefield, you legitimately don’t notice it.
The biggest downside is honestly in the variety of components. You certainly have all the components you need to build a standard battlefield. Don’t get me wrong. But just a handful of additional components would go a long, long way in your ability to make truly customized ruins. There’s a silver lining here: Snot Goblin Gaming is solving this with an expansion in the upcoming Kickstarter, the same one that the fully painted terrain launches with, in fact. I’ve actually got my hands on some early expansion components, and they’re pretty fantastic. But that’s an article for another day.
So What’s The Verdict, Huh?
Should come as no surprise, I really like this terrain. The fully painted versions are as fast and easy to build as ever. They look great on the battlefield, and the paint is stupidly durable.
Is this the right ruin for you? That’s for you to decide. But if you want to go from zero to a really respectable battlefield with extremely little effort, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better option. And if you want to find out more, Snot Goblin Gaming’s Kickstarter is launching soon
If you have any questions or comments feel free to drop us a note in the Comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. And if you want regular updates in your inbox, subscribe to our newsletter.
