Titan Terrain are a New Zealand company producing a range of reasonably priced laser cut 3mm MDF terrain sets. This review covers the ‘Vendorum’ building kit from their Sci-Fi Slum range.
This kit comes as the five shrink wrapped MDF sheets you see above. PDF build instructions are emailed to you when the order ships. The instructions are reasonably easy to follow, but they’re not keyed and the major parts are spread of over the four sheets so there’s a little bit of figuring out to do while you build.
It is a fast build though. I put my Vendorum together on a Saturday, and the majority of that time was waiting for the PVA wood glue to dry enough to move to the next step. You’ll need a sharp Xacto to cut out the pieces from the frames, and a file or scrap of sandpaper to tidy up the edges. I also had a bag of large rubber bands handy which made gluing easier.
The parts are well cut and go together easily, exactly and the joints are sturdy. The design is clever too and many parts hide the ‘tabbed’ edges within the finished building itself which is certainly a detail I appreciated. A good example of this is the added air-conditioning units that go together from a handful of parts but still manage to hide all the edges you’ve cut within the finished unit.
The overall building is very nice once it’s complete, with the white trim details adding a final touch that brings it all together. The windows, doors and ladders are well scaled for 28-32mm sci-fi figures. As a gaming piece, the building is great too, with a number of playable surfaces: the roof-tops, the store awning, and if your rule system has climbing rules I can see figures scaling the AC units as well. The variable height of the roof-top parapets also adds visual interest, and possibly amusing arguments about cover modifiers when figures are placed against them.
A highly recommended kit. I’m now considering expanding my collection further with a few more purchases from Titan Terrain. The Factorum looks quite tempting. However as usual I should probably paint what I’ve already built first!
Can you leave the white pieces off to make it easier to give it a two tone paint job?
Some of the trim you could leave off, but some is mandatory. The door and window frames for example…otherwise no doors or windows for you! It paints well, I’m half-way through painting mine at the moment.