Warhammer 40,000 – Battlezone: Fronteris – Landing Pad

As announced on Saturday with the Battlezone Fronteris Nachmund bundle for Warhammer 40k, we'll be covering its contents one by one, starting with the Landing Pad.

The boxed set with terrain in 28mm scale and has a RRP of 55 EUR or 42,50 GBP (~51 EUR). It consists of a large sprue and single casted piece for the topper. The instructions don't cover a data sheet for the terrain piece itself, those rules are part of the War Zone Nachmund: Vigilus Alone campaign supplement that is available separately for 42,50 EUR.

The Landing Pad was designed in the UK and produced in China, as this is often the case with the terrain kits. This doesn't cause any loss of quality, they sorted that out years ago. So, you get a proper crisp casting with a decent amount of detail. Mould lines are not an issue, just that larger pieces tend to have more and larger connections to the sprue itself, so that's a bit of work for preparation.

The topper of the landing pad is a single piece and not delivered within a sprue / frame. It has support beams on the underside and is pretty stable.

All the remaining pieces needed to build the landing part, are included in this sprue. You receive the four sides, the four corner pieces and a three-piece set of stairs. Adding up to a total number of 11 bits.

You get a sense for the size of this already when you unbox it. As it fills the box it came in almost completely. And as mentioned above, the 11 bits are quickly cut from the sprue. Cleaning the connection is the most time-consuming part of the build, as the next steps go quite easily.

The sides are marked with a tongue and groove connection and you can't mix them up, as they have smaller tongues in the front and larger ones in the back. Swapping the sides wouldn't make any sense anyway, as they design is mirrored. Connection is pretty solid and there are no major gaps.

Now the front and back piece are added to the landing pad, once again with a tongue and groove connection that directs you which design goes were. You can't swap those either, but here we have a different design for those. Major difference is that the pipeline connection piece is once in the middle and on the left on the other.

The corners are closed by two different designs. It's a small ladder on the left and another exhaust pipe on the right, on both sides identical. You can't mix them up, as the grooves are specifically designed for each front. And that's basically the landing pad done.

The last piece is a flight of stairs, which comes with a railing for the top. This one can be added either the front or to the  back depending on your liking or left off all along. You could probably magnetise this easily.

The exhaust pipes on this kit, fit the different pipeline sets by Games Workshop, meaning the Promethium Pipes and other fuel pipeline sets.

And of course, these are used by other kits as well, so you can connect these to the landing pad as well. The vox antenna from the other set fit on top of the door that's in the middle of the landing pad and the surface it is kept in size, so you can put the STC hab bunker on top of it neatly as well.

With a foot print of 21 by 28 cm, you get a good piece of terrain, that can be claimed even by a larger unit. Yet, for its purpose of a landing pad it is certainly smaller than the old Skyshield Landing pad, so you will have trouble putting flyers on there. The Valkyrie did not properly fit on there and I think only smaller things like an Aquila Lander or Stormtalon will fit on there.

Conclusion

This is a tough one. I like the overall design of the landing pad. With the fuel tanks on the side, the good foot print and elevated position it provides, it is a good piece of terrain. But it is basically the 40k counterpart of the Sigmarite Dais, which costs the same but covers so much more content. At 55 EUR RRP you have 27,50 EUR per sprue, that's quite the bar. I think there are multiple ways this kit would perform better. The easiest would be, price it properly, so with having considerably less content than the Dais and being smaller than the 50 EUR Skyshield, a tag of 40 to 45 EUR would be more appropriate.

But I think this kit could have received a bit more love. First of all, it is a landing pad. What do you do on a landing pad? You refuel, resupply and such. So maybe add a small sprue with the fuel tanks, palettes, drums and such. Or something like the Kill Team barricades, to provide a bit of cover for the landing aircrafts or troops on top of the terrain piece itself. They have these items; they could even have re-used some from one of the boxed sets.

Yes, you can add the vox antenna on top of it, and you can put the STC hab bunker on top of it as well. But for example, this landing pad would make for an interesting missile bunker as well, using the same technique they went with the vox antenna with. Just a topper, with the tip of a rocket designed on it. Maybe we will see something in the future, but this would have been a nice addition for a small sprue, with a bit of scatter terrain at it giving this kit a proper edge.

And to once more reconnect with the Sigmarite Dais. Games Workshop made that kit modular. You could use and combine multiple of the sigmar temple pieces and make for larger builds, combining the toppers with the side pieces. And to be honest, I expected something around the lines with the landing pad as well, giving me the option to build a larger landing pad - one that I could actually land something bigger than a Stormtalon on. Yes, as mentioned above, you can combine it with the other Fronteris kits, and that's okay.  It gets especially impressive combined with the STC hab bunker, but that's mostly because of the bunker not because of the landing pad and if you're going to do that, you are paying 55 EUR to raise it by 5 cm, so I guess that is not the most economical solution for that terrain idea.

So, to sum this up. This kit is certainly not a dud, it is solid but pricy and unfortunately doesn't make use of its full potential of being a better kit than what Games Workshop released. Especially with their own claim of providing the best miniatures on the market. Because I am willing to pay that premium price tag, if I get a premium product.

If you're interested in getting your hands on this and one or two of the other Fronteris kits, I highly recommend getting the Nachmund bundle, as then you can get a decent saving. Keep in mind, that due to the fact that these are terrain piece not produced in the UK but imported from their production facilities in China, availability can be an issue. So once the stock is gone, it is usually gone. In some cases - if the demand is high enough - another batch is produced, but that can take its time until it is available and then often only directly from Games Workshop, without the option of further savings by buying from independent retailers.

Warhammer 40,000 is a brand by Games Workshop

The reviewed product item was provided by the manufacturer.