While some of the most memorable battles of the Horus Heresy were large scale engagements, many took place point blank within the confines of voidships or sprawling facilities. Zone Mortalis (ZM) is a great way to represent these encounters while playing a smaller and quicker game of Heresy, with one huge catch – the terrain requirement. The high density of terrain required makes a Zone Mortalis table a serious commitment of both time and money. Today we’re looking at three different options from Bandua Wargaming that look to address this. We’d like to thank Bandua for sending out these sets for us to review.
Bandua Wargaming’s speciality is in making MDF terrain with designs preprinted on them, which means you just have to glue them together and you are good to go. Early last year I assembled, magnatised and painted up two sets of the Games Workshop’s plastic Boarding actions terrain, which took me about six weeks and burnt me out of the hobby for another two. The ability to just glue it together and be ready is a game changer. As a result, it’s a godsend for people who run events – which is one of the reasons we’ve invested heavily in their 40K and Kill Team offerings for Goonhammer Open events in the US and UK.
Underworld Series
This range mimics Games Workshop’s Zone Mortalis terrain, with thick chunky walls that really give that claustrophobic interior feel. Being the same size as the GW equivalent makes it compatible with the Necromunda or Zone Mortalis tiles if you already own them..
While you can purchase the pillars and walls separately, the easier and more economic way is to buy one of the bundles. One thing that isn’t immediately obvious is that none of the bundles include doors, which were designed by Bandua later. We were sent out the largest bundle, the Underworld Sector, which can fill out a four by four table with a few large rooms.
It took two evenings to put together the set, which is longer than it would do for a 40K table, however when you are looking at sixty individual components to assemble compared to a handful of large ones it makes sense. Instructions aren’t provided, which is fine as I found everything straight forward to assemble other than the couple of Fan modules – the first one took me a little bit to figure out, although I was always useless at puzzles.
The end result is really solid and looks fantastic once you set up the table and add a few bits of scatter terrain for flavour. The Underworld Sector bundle is available for three hundred euro, able to serve a dense 3×3 table or a 4×4 table if you have some larger rooms with scatter/set pieces.
Alpha Boarding Area
This set mirrors Games Workshop’s Boarding Actions terrain, while made for Warhammer 40,000 in mind, it can work perfectly for Zone Mortalis with a few considerations. Wings reviewed this set quite a while ago, so click through here to find his general thoughts and experience with the build.
From a usability perspective, this terrain is easier to use and quicker to assemble on the table than the official kit, as everything is the same size and just slots into another nicely – quite often with the official kit you have to rotate pieces to place doors and other features in the correct location.
What you need to consider when using this terrain for Zone Mortalis are that doors only come in one smaller size and the impact they will have on larger based models like Dreadnoughts. A well designed Zone Mortalis board will have some avenues where these larger models can roam, but not to everywhere. There are a few ways of addressing this:
- Simply have these avenues open for larger models to roam through without doors – which is how we used these sets at the recent Goonhammer Open, which worked reasonably well.
- Allow larger models through the smaller doors or have some way of indicating that only some are fully traversable
- Use some standalone doors which are big enough such as the ones from the Underworld series above to do the part. I used to use third party ZM width doors with my official Boarding actions terrain, so this should work. I’m afraid I don’t have the Alpha Boarding Area to hand to test it and take a photo though.
Bandua Boarding Zone – the noble Necron phalanx prepares a defenceJust this week, Games Workshop announced that Boarding Actions is coming back to tenth edition 40K, meaning you could double dip if you were so inclined. When laid out for Zone Mortalis, as set can cover a 3×3 footprint nicely.
This set is current available for 130euro versus the first party plastic kit for 135GBP. As you may have guessed from my earlier mentioned experience of assembling and painting my plastic set, I would buy the Bandua set if I was to do it again – I would much rather spend the time saved on my army.
Last Defence
Last Defence set. Credit – BanduaThe final set we’re covering today is The Last Defence bundle, which does not have any direct parallels and is not what normally comes to mind when people think of a Zone Mortalis table. This bundle consists of a set of high walls and connectors, alongside some blast doors and cargo boxes to use as scatter terrain.
When setup, this set will easily cover a four by four area with hallways that are considerably larger than a normal Zone Mortalis table but still far too tight for armour to move around on. The height of the terrain really conveys the idea that you are inside a grand gothic structure that you would expect to find in the Warhammer universe.
At the most recent Goonhammer Open (write up here), we used two of these sets slightly differently on full 6′ by 4′ tables. One of these had various fliers in it to represent a hangar bay aboard one of the voidships in orbit. The other was a Solar Auxillia armour depot, using some of jellymuppet’s tanks as scatter terrain. Both of these tables were cool and gave for a very different and claustrophic full sized game of Heresy.
The build for this set was very straightforward as it is mostly a set of rectangles for the main part. You will need some clamps to glue the blast doors together as they are three ply deep, to give them some depth.Â
This set is one of Bandua’s earlier designs and it shows, as the textures aren’t as good as the more recent designs and the large flat surfaces aren’t doing that any favours. With the right set dressing and scatter terrain it makes for a very cool and unique gaming experience. This set is the most expensive option of three we’re covering today, coming in at 465 euro. This set isn’t for everyone, as it’s not typical Zone Mortalis terrain or at the most accessible pricepoint – but for those who do want a table for battles that take place inside the megastructures within the final days of the Heresy, this set is worth checking out.
Closing Quarters
The Bandua Zone Mortalis kits offer a sweet spot of being very quick to have a presentable table for use at a reasonable price point. Some third parties have full tables of ZM in raw MDF, which is the cheapest option and can often look it – painting MDF can be quite challenging due to it’s absorbent nature. I’ve spent too much time on my armies to want to play on unpainted or uninteresting terrain, meanwhile I’m also not time rich enough to want to lovingly paint up another table of terrain.
Zone Mortalis is a fun format to play games in the Horus Heresy and I fully encourage people to check it out. Depending on your budget, I’d recommend checking out the Alpha Boarding Area or Underworld sets to get started and stage your close quarters battles in.
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