Warhammer 40,000 – Battlezone: Fronteris – STC Hab-Bunker and Stockades

Let's look into the final plastic kit of the Nachmund bundle, the Fronteris STC Hab-Bunker and Stockades.

With a price tag of 65 EUR or 50 GBP (~60 EUR) it is the most expensive of the three "new" (the STC Hab-Bunker is a re-release from the Sector Fronteris) plastic kits from the extended Fronteris range. Like the others, the Hab-Bunker and Stockades don't cover the rules for Warhammer 40,000 with the instructions, but the terrain traits and additional Narrative Play abilities are part of the War Zone Nachmund: Vigilus Alone campaign supplement that is available separately for 42,50 EUR.

Like the Landing Pad and Vox-Antenna/Auspex-Shrine these were designed in the UK and manufactured in China, as this is often the case with the terrain kits. But the production facilities both in Nottingham as well as the far east are on eye-level, so you don't have a difference in what you get. It's Games Workshop quality and shouldn't that be the case, I never had a problem with customer service owning up to that.

This kit covers three sprues. Two identical ones for the STC Hab-Bunkers and another, third one for the stockades. The bunker sprues are quite heavy, as the sides of the buildings are massive pieces of plastic. And both sprues are filled to the maximum. With the bunker sprues you'll even have a surplus of bits, as these are compatible with the Ryza Pattern ruins. The stockades are casted as massive single pieces as well. Due to their size and proportions, they are connected at a lot of points to the sprue, so this will give you a bit of work to clean up. Mould lines are not an issue and easily removed, as this has a non-organic shape. Just the edges between the tooth on top of the stockades are a bit trickier to handle.

The regular Hab-Bunker and Stockades kit covers three sprues. In the Nachmund bundle you get this one twice, so that adds up to a few stockades to play around with as well as a second bunker. But more on that further below.

The STC Hab-bunker is not a new design, but was exclusively part of the Sector Fronteris Kill-Team Killzone, which we covered in our reviews here back in 2019. One of my favourite kits and as part of the Killzone of incredibly good value, as you'd receive the bunker itself, a lot of Ryza ruins and even a game board for an RRP of 65 EUR. That value was still amazing when they raised the price to 80 EUR, but the box has gone OOP with the release of Nachmund.

With the Hab-bunker being built from two of the same sprues, you have a lot of mirrored or identical items. As mentioned above, these were part of a larger Ryza pattern set, so you get a few bits and pieces, that could be used to build ruins rather than intact buildings.

The main frame of the building is built from two large sides and two short sides. The later ones covering a door. They have two different designs on each side, but the shorter parts are due to the design of the doors, more clearly labelled as inside or outside, compared to the longer sidewalls. The build is quite sturdy, as these pieces are massive. They interlock with only a bit of play, but once the glue settles it is stable.

The roof and the sign on the front are made from two identical pieces, that interlock and create a larger copy of themself. The roof has a bit of play towards the front and back. I try to middle it, so the gap is not that present. As for the sign above the front, that interlocks neatly into the gap. Just make sure it doesn't lean too far forward.

Next up are the covers for the windows. Each sprue gives you 3 of these panels, so in total 6. That isn't enough to close the entire building. Yet, as this is build from the Nachmund bundle and we have  two of them, we have enough to close all of the windows. Only a slight problem, one of them is set above the pipe exhaust and thus needs a bit of cutting to produce a clean finish (meaning closing cover).

And there is the closed, "fortified" STC-Hab bunker, proving its name to be true. I am honest, this is my personal highlight of these sets. I am huge fan of these, especially if you have some ryza ruins as well, as you can build like a shanty western town like Imperial settlement with these.

So next up, the stockades. A really interesting new design and perfect to create some proper cover on your battlefield or to hedge certain areas in your games. Each sprue covers one gate-section and three regular sections, along with corner and connection pieces, to combine these massive barriers.

As much as I like the design. They didn't spend that much love on this while putting it on the sprue. For example, these stockades are shown to have blinds that you can pull up to close the barrier. Yet, these are designed in a fixed position and not as individual pieces. It would have been so much cooler and are more intelligent design, if we had some spares, like the bunker, that you could close some of them, as quickly photoshopped in the second picture.

And that design flaw is repeated with the gate section. It surely could be modified to be open and I'll give it a try with the second set. But the mechanism clearly shows a closed setting, so even if I cut the doors from the gate, which will be possible with the proper tools, I have to re-model those. They did this in a much cleverer way on the Necromunda Gang Stronghold, where the whole door even comes with hinges and is moveable.

Next up the connection pieces. You have two-piece for 90° corners, they can be used for either inward or outward facing corners.

If you want to place the stockades simply, side by side, you don't need a connection piece, they will stand in line. You could probably magnetize them, but that would lock you into straight and 90-degree angles, and wouldn't give you option for a slightly angled positions, that a battlefield might need.

The third part is a connection piece, for the stockades to seamlessly connect to the STC Ryza / Hab-bunker sides. So again, this is working not only with the hab-bunker from this kit but the Ryza pattern ruins as well. A nice addition and neat little design.

You can combine the bunker and stockades freely. Anyhow, four sides won't give you enough to properly close the area around the bunker. You'll need a second set of stockades, ideally with some of them cut in half.

The bunkers are a proper terrain piece and very versatile in design and combination. As you can see, they are large enough to provide cover or interaction even for larger units. And due to the exhausts, you can combine the building with the pipelines as well as other Games Workshop terrain pieces, not only from the Fronteris range.

The footprint of the STC hab-bunker fits the landing pad, giving it a very solid base to sit upon. And I have to say, combined with the all-closed windows, this makes for a very impressive Underhive building or otherwise fortified terrain pieces. In my case, I'll probably use it as a Guild Bank or Gang Stronghold.

The height of the stockade and size of the windows is well chosen. As you can see it fits the old Necromunda gangers and as such will provide a proper base for Imperial Guard from that era as well. And of course, a good job with today's range.

Conclusion

Very impressive package. Certainly, a good (updated) addition to the Warhammer 40.000 terrain range. It creates a different style compared to the wall of martyrs, not like these World-War-One trench wars, but a compound. Especially in combination with the landing pad, creating an elevated position for the bunker, this screams army base. And as such fits colonial warfare in Warhammer 40k, as well as the upcoming Ash wastes for Necromunda. I can even see this as an area division between certain districts of the Underhive. So, definitely very cool.

But I'd say, to really make it work, especially with the stockades, you'll need two sets of these. And at this point, due to the high price of 65 EUR, you're already in gripping range of the Nachmund bundle and should go for that one and maybe add a few Ryza Pattern Ruins (they are OOP, but you can grab them from the Conquest or Imperium magazines), or even one of the Sector Fronteris Killzones remaining stocks from one of the independent dealers. The price of ~22 EUR per sprue is better than with the other kits, but still not great.

I really like the design of the STC Hab-bunkers, you can vary the sides with the other Ryza sets (as long as you can get your hands on them), so beside the mirrored design, and small flaw with covers, I don't have anything to argue about this. As for the stockades. These are okay, but it would have been so much better, if they went for individual blinds as well as options for the gate to open and close it. 65 EUR isn't cheap for these, especially if you keep in mind that in 2019 you got the bunker, along with two sprues of ruins and a game board for the same price, until two weeks ago for 80 EUR. So, it is a bit hard to feel happy about this price, if you got a better deal only a few days ago. I hope that we get an option to buy the stockades on their own somewhere in the future, as you'll probably have a ratio of 2 to 1 of them towards buildings, along with some sections to play around with, like having them blasted or damaged. Or maybe modified to have closing blinds.

As mentioned above, you should probably get two of these as you want to have a useful amount of stockades and at that point just go for the Nachmund bundle, drop the price per sprue and enjoy the additional content. I don't want to inflame the fear of missing out, that is already done far too often, but 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 in the future, especially with the more popular sets. Once the stock is gone, it is often gone and may take some time to resupply. 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. We have seen this for example with the Necromunda Underhive tiles from plastic.

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The reviewed product item was provided by the manufacturer.