TW Plastic Monastic Scenery Review - part 1

For some reason our postman decided to leave a red card through the door, rather than leave my parcel with neighbours as he usually does. This meant three days of me frothing at the prospect of my new Tabletop Workshop plastic terrain, without being able to collect them. Finally on Saturday they were in my hands.

They came in a rather large brown box packed with green 'wotsits' making the whole thing rather solid and safe. Rather than have loose or bagged up pieces I was pleased to see that each of the four buildings were in their respective boxes.

This blog post is going to review the Monastic Chapel in detail then we'll follow that up later in the week with the rest of the set, for reasons that will become obvious.

Upon opening the box, the first thing I noticed was that there were no sprues. All the pieces had been removed from their parent sprue – mostly with no ill effect – and the building instructions are on the inside of the lid, saving on bits of paper. The bits do rattle around in there as a consequence.

The pieces themselves couldn't be more straightforward – a floor, two side walls, two end walls and two halves of the roof. Very chunky pieces of plastic and full of detail.

To be fair, I didn't read the instructions as it was so obvious how it all went together, and 10 seconds later there was a monastic chapel sitting on my dining room table. You could almost leave this built without the need for any glue at all. The side walls slot into the floor piece, then the two end walls snap into place holding everything pretty secure. Only the roof would need gluing together as I found the two halves kept sliding apart when in place.

Outside, the scale looks spot on, certainly for the models I will be using. The Norman miniatures here are Perry 28mm and look perfectly at home.

Inside, the scale is again perfect, and you can already start to see things come to life. There is as much detail inside as out and you could easily build and paint an entire village in an afternoon, with a simple basecoat, wash and minor detailing.

I've noticed Games Workshop's plastic terrain tends to be over-cluttered with details. Not so here. There is enough detail to give each piece a wow factor whilst remaining quite neutral so you can put your own mark on it, adding extra detail if you wish.

A couple of things to note though. The inside does have several circular mould marks on it, so if you intend to use the inside of the building a lot you will have to go at it with a file somewhat to remove these.

Whilst these marks don't occur on the outside of the building at all, there is a bit on the end walls where the sides are clipped in place. Reminiscent of some of the MDF buildings we're seeing but not a problem unless you're as fussy as me. 

Aside from the circles on the inside there were no mould lines at all to file off, just a couple of places where the sprue was removed might need a little attention.

Overall a superb piece of kit. Solid, chunky, lightweight, detailed (but no skulls cluttering the place), so easy to put together and no doubt a joy to paint. It costs £18.50 if bought separately, but as part of the bundles it will come in at considerably less.

My only real niggle – and I'm clutching at straws here – is that the door doesn't open.

Despite that, I would heartily recommend this kit. It will surely fit in with other genres besides historical (Mordheim, Witch Finder, etc).

Next time the Cottage, Barn and Stable…