With SAGA Summer in full swing, we’ve covered how to build, play and paint warbands. For everyone diving in to a new period – or if we’ve finally convinced you to pick up Historicals (welcome, it’s great isnt it?) – there’s one thing missing: Terrain. Enter Bandua, who don’t just provide fantastic 40k, Heresy and Kill Team terrain, but Historical terrain, tokens and rulers perfect for SAGA too!
Before digging into some of the Historical terrain on offer, let’s thank Bandua for sending it over for review! Links to each product reviewed are Goonhammer Affiliate links, so if you like what you see pick it up and support Goonhammer while you’re at it. If you’re reading this as it came out, there’s even a sale on!
It’s SAGA Summer! Enjoy our coverage during the raiding season as we take a look at the factions, miniatures, and everything else you need to get started playing SAGA and earning massacre points.
Age of Saga Medieval Village
The Age of Saga Medieval Village, much like its predecessor the Norse Farmstead, is a decent set for anyone looking to spice up their table with some quick-to-build, easy-on-the-eye buildings.
The kit comes flat-packed and disassembled on MDF frames in a couple of plastic bags. While it takes up next to no space like this, it’d be really great if you could actually dry-fit the whole thing for gaming, allowing it to be flat-packed when not in use – but unfortunately due to the structure of the houses you definitely need to glue it together. That’s fine, just takes a few minutes.
It’s fast to assemble, although your mileage may vary if you’re keen on MDF and have the patience to work with wood glue over superglue. It doesn’t come with instructions, although it’s mostly pretty intuitive – after a bit of trial and error, I had the whole set assembled in 20-30 minutes.
The kit is made of two timber-framed houses, which wouldn’t be out of place anywhere in Western or Central Europe between the 11th-14th centuries. The two houses – one large, one smaller – are joined by three stone walls and one fence, so you can build it as a farmstead, part of a small hamlet or a homestead and a storehouse, or wherever else imagination takes you.
Like the Norse set, the buildings and walls have printed textures which work really nicely – you could go over the bare edges with paint, but it’s not necessary. The smaller hut comes with its own ‘base’ which could be removed (as I did) if you want to be able to lift the hut off the tabletop to move models inside.
Gamewise, this set would do for anything from SAGA to Lion Rampant to Baron’s War. In fact, it’s definitely ideal for multiple systems – the modularity of the terrain (especially the walls and fence) means it’s really flexible. You could even wind up playing Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game, Warhammer: The Old World or Age of Sigmar with this stuff if you’re so inclined.
In terms of durability, as covered in our Norse Farmstead review, it’s tough stuff. You don’t need to worry too much about chipping or general wear and tear; although I’d recommend making sure you use decently strong wood glue when assembling just to give it a bit extra strength.
Finally, if you’re looking to expand, Bandua’s Wargames 2D Terrain Set would be a great addition for gamers in the medieval frame of mind. Bandua’s great – give them a look!
Palisade
A key feature of many periods we fight in historicals is the castle or fortification. If you want to use siege rules, theme your battlefield or fight out last ditch defences, then from ancients through to the American frontiers, you need fortifications. The Bandua Palisade presents that with a flexible, modular castle/palisade/fort that can be used in a variety of periods. It’s a wooden fortification, something that while superceded by stone, was a feature of conflicts around the world, so it will look good in Medieval battles (whether European or Levantine), do well enough for Roman encampments, Norman Baileys, Wild West forts and anywhere else you need a big ol’ wooden fort. It’s a massive, modular structure that you can scale up or down – in its fully laid out form (pictured above) it’s over a foot square, and at minimum (say, two towers, one straight section, two curved and gatehouse) it’s still going to dominate the board – as it should!
When it arrived with me in a preposterously giant box I was concerned that it would be a real nightmare to put together, but it’s quite simply constructed, with single sheets of MDF forming four major components – towers, straight wall sections, curved wall sections and the gatehouse. If you work sheet by sheet construction is straightforward, with well designed cutouts and tabs meaning that you can’t really construct it wrong, which is nice.
One tricky part is the supports for the straight and curved wall sections – you need just a little more force than is safe to put through the MDF uprights, so take your time and don’t push too hard. I was initially a little concerned that it was scaled for heroic 28mm or 32mm, but the battlements work well for archers who’re peeping over the crenels to get a good, relatively safe, shot off at the enemy.
Once built, the Palisade looks absolutely fantastic – the MDF printing is just a simple wood effect pattern but nevertheless really sells the Palisade as an impressive and imposing wooden fortification. It doesn’t need any further work and will look excellent straight out of the box. I was particularly impressed with the wall sections where the structural uprights give a lot of additional visual detail – combined with the supplied ladders (which you can leave loose so you can use them as siege equipment too!) the interior of the fort is simple and (as-is) a little sterile, but not boring or “gamey”. There’s some really nice touches, like the bar for the doorway and hatches for the towers that sell a little more verisimilitude.
You could push this set really far (and I plan to) with only a little more work – perhaps some storage up against the wall sections, ropes and stacked stones on the tower top and mud/dust around the base of the segments. This will be a really great project if you want to go down that route – and guess what I’m going to do next? We’ll return to our coverage of Bandua Historicals terrain with next steps – how to add additional lived in details, wear and tear and period-appropriate extras to push it all to the next level!
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