With their sets of matched play compatible MDF terrain in wide use across the tournament scene, Bandua Wargames is becoming a well-known name in the 40k scene. Now they’ve released a similar set of terrain for Age of Sigmar events, which we’re taking a look at here. Thanks to Bandua Wargames for providing the set of scenery used for this review.
If you’ve ever attended a Goonhammer Open UK for Warhammer: 40,000, you’ll have played on our excellent sets of Bandua Wargames terrain. They’ve honestly been a revelation for event organising – they’re affordable, easy to put together, and come in a variety of pre-printed designs that allow variation between tables without sacrificing consistency of layout. When you’ve got to replicate dense terrain patterns over tens of tables, the thought of buying, building and painting that volume of plastic terrain is faintly terrifying.
I’m not here to review the 40k terrain sets, though (Rob already did that last year). With tournament Age of Sigmar increasingly popular, and as a keen event attendee myself, I’ve been given the task at looking at Bandua’s recent set of Age of Sigmar terrain. This attempts to answer the same questions as the 40k sets do – providing pre-coloured, easy to build MDF pieces combined with printed fabric zones to create quick, unambiguous terrain layouts.
We’re reviewing the 2.0 set, updated by Bandua for AoS4. The set contains two medium and two small L-shaped ruins, each with a four-sided fabric mat as a base. Alongside these are two irregular shaped areas to be woods/obscuring terrain, printed with an appropriate pattern. Finally, there are two arcane portals. These push out of an MDF frame and assemble into a small base, sandwiching a sheet of coloured printed film to give a nice portal effect. These stand on printed rectangular MDF bases, rather than cloth. All of the MDF is printed on at least one side, so that every visible surface is patterned. This set is the Forest print.
Building the Terrain
The first thing to note is the form factor the terrain arrives in. It’s a nice flat pack box, and there’s not a lot of wasted space in there. Like the 40k terrain this does open up the possibility of keeping the set packed flat for easy storage but, also like the 40k terrain, I wouldn’t recommend it. The fit on the pieces is precise, but not an interference fit, so you might struggle to keep them together over the course of a game if they’re not secured somehow.
Building the ruins was a fairly simple task, given that three of them are just two walls with a corner join between them. The fourth ruin, one of the larger ones, also has a small triangle of upper floor to add some much needed 3d atmosphere to the pieces. After popping out a few windows, I set about gluing the buildings together with wood glue (regular craft PVA would be fine). One thing to note here, I was lucky to remember I owned some 90 degree corner clamps. This made keeping the ruins at true right angles much easier, as before using these I did find that they were a bit hard to align accurately. If you don’t own the clamps, I’d suggest using something with a known right-angle to make sure the corner of each ruin is correct before leaving the glue to dry. An engineer’s square is the obvious answer, but something like a book or a dice cube would work in a pinch.
The portals were a little bit more involved. They consist of two face pieces and three long pieces that frame the edge, and this whole assembly then slots into a base piece. After a couple of failed attempts, my method was as follows: first use a few dots of glue to tack the coloured film in place on the inside of one of the faces. Take the other face and glue on the top frame, then the two side pieces. Attach the first face piece onto this assembly, then finally slot the whole thing into the base, gluing the joins first. I found that the pieces didn’t locate firmly into the base, leaving my portal on a bit of a slant. My clamps wouldn’t fit here, so I dug out the aforementioned square-cornered object (a GW Miniature of the Month box, in my case) to prop the portal up while it dried.
The Assembled Terrain
That’s it for the assembly, nice and simple! In my opinion, the set looks perfectly good on the tabletop. The spot colours from the portals are a nice touch, making sure the table isn’t just a sea of green. I do have two criticisms, firstly that I don’t think the green tones of the forest design are quite as striking as some of the themed faction offerings for Bandua’s 40k terrain line. They do also offer the set in Desert and Invernal (a kind of wintry theme) colourways, and of the three I think the desert set is the most impactful.
Secondly, the purely L-shaped ruins do feel a little bit sparse when compared with some of the amazing plastic terrain that Games Workshop offers (or has offered in the past). Honestly this is just never going to be a favourable comparison – they’re completely different products, made with different goals in mind. The trade-off is that the Bandua set costs less than two average pieces of GW terrain, requires hardly any hobby effort, and fills the table. Still, players used to events providing bountiful harvests of high-effort terrain may find the open spaces take some getting used to.
I do think the Arcane Portals are the real standout pieces in the set. They’re a bit more in-depth to build, but the result is a much more 3D-feeling terrain piece. If the set goes through any future development, I’d love to see some more buildings like archways or more complex ruins built in this style.
Pleasingly, and of note to budding tournament organisers, the set fits nicely into a 9LXL Really Useful Box, and in fact I think its likely that you could fit 2-3 complete sets in one box. That makes it easy to store, and easy to transport to a club or your buddy’s house for a game if needed.
Gaming With the Terrain
There’s no better way of testing a terrain set out than by getting a bunch of people to play games with it. Luckily, I had a local tournament recently, and the organiser was kind enough to let me replace one of the tables of terrain with the Bandua Wargames set and petition the players across the weekend for their opinions. I’ll give my thoughts first, and then highlight some feedback from other players.
For me, I’m a big fan of the terrain set and really enjoyed the games I’ve played on it at the event and since. I feel that the fabric bases cover roughly the right amount of the table, the ruins really clearly block some lines of sight, and the arcane portals really stand out as Places of Power, but are also sized correctly to use as obstacles if a battleplan’s terrain map calls for it.
I will caveat that by saying that I am a matched play gamer at heart. For me, having the bases clearly marked out and terrain pieces simple to understand is a benefit I really love, and for me it’s more important than having a truly immersive scenic board. For others this may not be the case, and they might find that the lack of truly 3D scenery is a detractor. You’ll definitely need to go through the terrain map with your opponent at the start of the game to agree what each piece represents, but honestly this is true of every matched play game of AoS I’ve ever played (at least since terrain rules became somewhat sensible), so I don’t think it’s really an issue to level at the Bandua terrain specifically.
Other players’ thoughts on the set varied. Everyone agreed that it fulfilled the base needs of a set of terrain for an AoS game, and nobody had a bad game on it, but there were definitely a range of opinions when it came to the idea of buying a set of the terrain. This split pretty clearly into two groups – more veteran hobbyists with established terrain collections and potentially their own gaming spaces didn’t really see the appeal of the set. Newer gamers on the other hand, or those with limited space or income, really saw the appeal of being able to furnish a whole table for €65 (at the time of writing).
From the tournament organiser standpoint, I definitely see the appeal. I’m lucky to have a local game store that has a pretty good stock of plastic and resin terrain, but trying to assemble 8-10 tables worth of fair matched play maps from it can be a real pain. I’m definitely considering buying myself a couple more Bandua sets just so that I can have a few tables ready to go, and not have to stretch the rest of the terrain so far.
Final Verdict
Overall, I think the Bandua AoS terrain sets are a really great answer to a specific set of needs for matched play terrain. They clearly won’t be for everybody, but what product is? If you’re looking for an easy on-ramp to populating a table with terrain that’s fit for purpose and plenty visually appealing, the set sits at an accessible price point and is easy to build and store, leaving more time for working on your pile of grey plastic.
One thing that I do want to talk about quickly – this terrain set was designed with the 2024-25 General’s Handbook season in mind, and looking at some of the terrain maps for the upcoming new season there may be some need for extra places of power and overgrown terrain markers. I can’t level this criticism at Bandua, because this set was provided to us in the depths of that season, but if you’re buying one now you may want to add some extra Arcane Portals, or supplement the set with your own terrain collection for battleplans that require it. Of course, the joy of the clearly-defined fabric terrain zones is that you and your opponent can agree that they represent whatever keywords are needed for a particular layout, without raising sticky rules interactions, so it’s not a huge issue.
If you’re interested in grabbing a set of this terrain for yourself, consider ordering a set using the below link. We receive a commission for these purchases.
The Bandua Wargames Matched Play Set for Age of Sigmar.
Hopefully the photos show that if you’re looking to get an Age of Sigmar matched play terrain set up and running quickly, these sets will let you do that with a visually appealing board that’s easy to play on.
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