A review of Dream Pod 9's Heavy Gear Terrain

During the February sale at Dream Pod 9, my friend and I decided to take advantage of it and order some of the nice new Heavy Gear scenery that's being sold by them on their webstore.

We ordered it near the end of February, and got a shipping note on the 2nd of March, and then it arrived here on the 13th of February, which isn't too bad from Canada to Scotland, via the perils of two countries postal systems.

And here's what it looked like when I opened the box.

Big box of scenery goodness

My friend also agreed to let me hang onto them for a little while, so I could grab some photos of them "straight out the box" as it were. So onto a whole load of photos. I've added in my Black Talon and one of my critical mass guys for a rough idea of scale. Also these aren't assembled yet. Some of them aren't mine so I didn't want to assemble them. I'll see if my friend is willing to take some snaps of them once done and painted.

Badlands solar panel

Badlands wind turbine

Badlands outpost with a whole load of bits

Badlands homestead shed

Shipping containers

Twin water tanks

Water condensor

Stone heads (this is the four pack, I got the twin pack which only gets you the one on the far left and far right)

Badlands homestead tower

Badlands homestead housing module (the roof should be circular, the tab on the side is from the mould, again it's not mine so didn't want to cut it off)

Small stone heads trio

Quality wise they are really good. They're all solid casting, so no interiors which is a shame, but still fine. The resin they've used seems more flexible rather than brittle, and is very good stuff and has taken the details of the mould very well, as they are nice and sharp.

 Very little to no mould lines are present on them, and what is present I only needed to scrape off with a scalpel (I've started work on building mine). My only complaint would they have a large section of excess resin on the bottom (you can see it on the housing module, the shed, and some of the others). It follows the line of the actual scenery, though is recessed in by 1-2mm, and is just obviously excess resin. However a couple of minutes with a good saw should see it off, or for some hardwork and filling your house with resin dust a file would do the job (if you go this route, mind and wear a dust mask).

The parts fit together very well, as I dry fitted what I could of the outpost together, while a lot of the others were simply one piece casting, so no work is needed beyond a bit of removing mould lines and excess resin as described above.

Obviously these are scaled for Heavy Gear, which is 12mm scale or 1/144, but I also think that these would work pretty well for 15mm games as well, certainly the ones without doors would work. The ones with doors would work as well, as long as they didn't get too close to the doors. I placed my critical mass guy up against the door and he'd be hitting the top of his head off the frame as he walked in. Still they're off a good enough size that it would still be believeable that several guys, even at 15mm size could get in.

I must admit as well, the shipping containers were a bit small, I would've liked something bigger. Even with a 12mm trooper next to them, the trooper would probably be about the height of them, so something a bit bigger would've been nice. Other than that I'd say they were pretty decent value for money.

The only other con is that currently they're a DP9 store exclusive, so you have to order from them. Now while I have received excellent customer service from them on both this order and others, I'm always nervous of packages going missing when ordering from abroad, and then of course the added joy of customs tax pushing the cost up even more. Now that DP9 finally has a distributor in the UK, I would like to see them making these available, though I don't know if that will happen.

Anyways, over the next week or so, I'm going to get my bits assembled and cleaned off to get rid of the dreaded mould release on them, and then they can join the painting queue (which is vast), but I'll try and get these on it sometime. My friend and I are going to agree a paint scheme so our various bits of terrain match on the tabletop.

I hope that's helped a bit. If you're a player of Heavy Gear and are considering purchasing these I would recommend them. They're decent value for money, and I must admit, they are a good size for what I paid for them. If anyone has any questions though please feel free to ask, and I'll try my best to answer them.