Zen Terrain - HAB 1 Buildings

After having great success with Terrakami Cargo Crates I started to look around for more buildings to scatter on my boards when playing Infinity or Relic Knights. I specifically wanted a sci-fi feel and to keep the cost low. I found a great company called Zen Terrain based in Poland. They do a massive selection of futuristic looking terrain at very affordable prices, the product which specifically took me was the HAB1 Bundle Pack. This consists of three HAB1 buildings which can be used individually or stacked, great! What's more, at the time of writing this only costed £17.84 so I ordered these and some more items as postage is another £10 and I wanted to get the most out of one shipment.

So on to the terrain, it comes as flat pack HDF with a single piece of A4 to describe how to build it, the instructions are clear and I didn't even dry fit it all as I was surprised to find how few pieces there are when compared to say 4Ground or Terrakami. I worried a little this might mean they are less detailed but that isn't the case as we can see later.

I set up my massive paint desk in the garage and 10 minutes later had it all out in groups across the table. I wanted a gritty grey to white effect on the buildings with a rooftop colour that would pop which is where I found these little gems.

Just £5 for the cheap'o spray paint
I already had some army painter black lying around but managed to get the neon orange, white and grey for £5 at the local £1 store. I was a bit dubious at first but the results I achieved with these were exactly what I was after so I am very pleased I didn't end up paying £20+ for branded spray paint as I used a good amount of it.

So using the grey spray paint I primed all the boards twice on each side. Make sure you leave long enough to dry between coats, for me this was about 30 minutes between sprays which was really quick. The board will soak up a lot of the first coat so make sure you do at least two.

Two coats of grey down on each side
I then sprayed the rooftop with the neon orange, I was a bit scared at this point as I had no idea how it would turn out with the cheap paint but I was overjoyed when it came out looking how I wanted. I tried to not apply the coat evenly as I wanted some variation in colour to make it look more naturally weathered. I then sprayed the steps with a quick blast of black each side and quickly made some vegan rock cakes whilst all this dried.

All Vegan, All Great!
Once ready I applied the white coat, I don't have any pictures of this stage but I lined up all my terrain facing the same direction (top side facing me, lowest side away from me) then I made passes of white across the closest side of each piece. This produced a really nice gritty gradient effect from white to grey. I repeated this process twice each side then left to dry. You can use the spray cans like a poor man's airbrush so don't be afraid.

I then gathered all the bits indoors and surprisingly only spent around 45 minutes gluing it all together. I couldn't believe it, usually the gluing stage has taken me ages with other products but because there are so few parts this can be done very quickly, just make sure you have some elastic bands to hold it all tight whilst it dries.

Elastic bands to hold them together overnight
The following morning I took off the elastic bands and admired what was left. I am really impressed with the quality, cost and how quickly I could get these terrain pieces finished. Not only can they be used as single pieces but they can also be stacked.

Stacked Zen Terrain HAB1 Buildings
These aren't quite finished as I still want to weather some rust onto them and make the lettering and window edges stand out with a different colour but it just shows how quickly you can get these together and make your boards look awesome.

Hats off the guys at Zen Terrain for making some great functional pieces that look the part. I will be churning through all the other Zen Terrain bits I have waiting to build over the next few weeks but I have to give this pack a ten out of ten and a must have for all sci-fi skirmish wargamers out there.

Craig McNicholas

Some say he’s half man half fish, others say he’s more of a seventy/thirty split. Either way he’s a fishy bastard.

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