We took a look at Hextech terrain a few months back when it first launched as a collaboration between Gale Force 9 and Thunderhead Studio. Hextech is a series of cast resin buildings and roads to build 6mm science fiction cities with. This is the third wave of releases for it, with a couple additional buildings, one of which has some unique options (the other is merely very large). We’d like to thank GF9 for sending us these review copies of the buildings.
The quality of these is every bit as high as the first wave if not a little better. The painting seems to be just a tiny bit cleaner, but not in any way I could objectively measure – quality was very high to begin with. This release has three new buildings: The Megablock, the Tri-Tower, and the Binary Towers. As with the buildings in the first wave, they are each on a removable hex base. For classic Battletech or other hex based games, you can place the hexes down and set the buildings in them. For Alpha Strike or other 6mm games that aren’t using hexes, the buildings have a nice velvet bottom to keep them in place.
The Megablock and Binary Towers are each a single building in a box, so they’re all painted the same – grey for the main body with some tan accents. The Tri-Towers come two to a box, so much like many of the buildings in the first release the second has flipped the color scheme for variety – a tan building with grey accents. Windows on all of them are painted blue, and would benefit from a pass with gloss varnish. It won’t take more than a couple minutes each, and will give some good pop on the table.
Binary Towers are in some ways an alternate version of the Tri-Towers. Sharing the same basic structure, it’s two connected buildings where one is an additional level tall. The two buildings are connected by a skybridge, which has two levels of clearance under it so mechs can be placed.
The skybridge comes in two optional lengths, either one hex long or three. The single hex length matches the STL version sold by Thunderhead that you can print at home, and the three hex length adds the additional option of being able to span across the entire road. It also makes access to that space much easier – with my printed version it can be very hard to use the space under the bridge, either because my hand just doesn’t fit or the mech overhangs the base too much and bangs into the buildings. When it spans the width of the road it’s much easier to fit in, and just looks a whole lot cooler. As with everything Hextech, there are hex guidelines on the top of the skybridge so you can place mechs properly.
Choosing which skybridge to use isn’t a one-time decision. Included in the package is a set of small magnets that can be glued into pre-placed holes and allow you to swap which piece you’re using, or replace the skybridge entirely with some caps and use the two buildings separately. That said, at 3/16″ x 1/16″ these are very small magnets and are going into holes that are slightly larger. You’ll need to glue them in yourself, and the process is quite fiddly to get polarity correct. They’re definitely strong enough to hold – while you can easily pull the long bridge apart, it’s braced well enough by both buildings, and they’re unlikely to slide around, so I don’t have any concerns about it coming apart mid game.
While nothing in here is a groundbreaking must-have to build your cities with, it adds some great variety to what’s already available and keeps the same high quality of the first set. I continue to wish that the windows were gloss coated and that the bases were fully compatible with the 3d printed versions (check my first review here to see more about the bases), but neither of those are dealbreakers.
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