“Wargame terrain so tough, you’ll be passing it down to your children.”

My son has recently graduated from Heroscape to Age of Sigmar selling off all his Heroscape to bankroll the Age of Sigmar starter set (as well as a Nintendo Switch). What this means is that we now needed a whole new set of terrain for this new game. Our storage space is fairly limited so we needed something that could be stored in a small space, which likely means the scenery bits would need to be on top of each other. Additionally, we still have little sister who also likes to play with minis having done so for years with that Heroscape set. Add these two together, and we needed easy to store, durable terrain. Games Workshop’s hard plastic with small bits and details wouldn’t do.

Enter….Advanced Terrain.

Advertising themselves as the makers of near indestructible terrain, and watching videos of said terrain being driven over, this was exactly what we needed. I contacted the owner, Patrick Brossard, via email to ask a bit more about his product and he confirmed the toughess of his product and also provided painting steps if I wanted my terrain to match the website. Great costumer service, so I immediately placed an order for a complete set of the unpainted, rubber terrain. He was gracious enough to include a set of the resin fences for the purpose of this review.

As posted on the Advanced Terrain website, the Ruins Starter Pack contains all four sets (Conseptum Walls, Domus Ruins, Conseptum Terrace, and Fallen Columns) unpainted.  Upon receiving and opening the bags of terrain the first thing that hit me was a very strong rubber smell likely due to the makeup of the material and its storage in a sealed bag. (The wife requested the terrain be stored in the garage until painted.) The pieces were all made of black rubber, sort of reminding me of the toughness of tire rubber. They could be bent and twisted, but maintain their shape and integrity.

The fences don’t bend and twist as they are made from tough polyurethane resin. I have no doubt they’ll hold up just as well.

So, the terrain appears to be as advertised, but how does it paint up and will it suit our needs?

Using the zenithal priming technique for the first time, I primed all the terrain first black, then a light coat of grey on the top half, and finally a dusting of white on the top. First bit of good news is that the terrain no longer had the very strong rubber smell and after a bit outside…no longer had the primer smell either.

Painting terrain isn’t my favorite thing to do when there are so many minis on the shelf that need attention, but as WSTZ-James says, “You won’t always use the same minis, but you always need terrain.” Fair enough. Still, not excited. When determing how to paint the terrain, I thought about what is available for Age of Sigmar. All the official mats and scenery I’ve seen for Age of Sigmar is so colorful that my eye sometimes has a difficult time parsing out the minis. The battlefields are awash in colors and everything sort of blends together. So, with not being excited to paint terrain and not wanting our minis lost in the battlefield, I opted to only go with three colors maximum. Not much. Would the terrain still look good?

Not bad at all. The test piece looked good, so I proceeded to continue with the darker colors, again hoping our minis will ‘pop-out’ against them. After only a few brief hours of using two or three wash colors against the zenithal primed Advanced Terrain I wound up with a full table ready for action.

Eager to get stuck in, a Knight Questor and some Horrors gave the terrain a test run.

Zooming in on a shot of the resin fences, we see that after being painted they fit in with the rubber ruins perfectly. Well done.

So, the terrain seems nigh indestructible and paints easily…but how does it store? Well, we require terrain that can just be dumped in a bin as we did with Heroscape. So, for the final test…

Perfect!

Nothing breaks and paint hasn’t even chipped. This is _exactly_ what we need.

Being able to have a complete table furnished for battle at only $110 shipped with the starter pack means we didn’t have to break our bank. Combining the durability, ease to paint, and low cost, I must give Advanced Terrain my highest possible recommendation. This is, indeed, terrain I’ll be able to leave to the kids…