Zen Terrain – Small company with big ideas
Today I’m bringing you some information about yet another great company located in Poland that is producing Infinity terrain. Bear with me, as they really could be bringing neat quality to your gaming tables.
I had the pleasure of cooperating with Zen Terrain during my last major event, Warsaw Open. Want to know more?
Zen kindly provided some prizes for the participants. They have also furnished a table with their own terrain. I was given some terrain that I asked for beforehand to review.
Like many manufacturers, Zen Terrain uses MDF to execute their designs. When talking about designs it is worth mentioning that they are very complex compared to the competition. It probably comes from the fact that the guy behind the company – Krzysztof Leszczyński graduated in Architecture at the Gdańsk Technical University. They are modular and stackable, meaning that multiples of certain buildings can be used to bulid more complex constructions.
The company provides regular buildings, among them dice towers, civilian and military installations, as well as scatter terrain such as benches, boxes, vehicles or streetlights. I was provided one of each type of their product to check out myself.
The items I got were the “Fast Food” booth and a HAB unit. For a newbie building constructor such as myself, the amount of pieces was a little daunting. Thankfully, each set comes with a detailed instruction, so following it I was able to build the terrain without any problems. Compared to other manufacturers, I was surprised to learn that I did in fact need glue to assemble the pieces, my experience so far didn’t tell me that it was a necessary element of a building assembly session.
The buildings seem to be made with a couple general rules in mind. Firstly, they are futuristic looking, more so than any other terrain I have seen. The inspiration seems to come from titles such as “Blade Runner” or “Ghost in the Shell”, titles which most Infinity gamers should be familiar with. Secondly, they are made to be part of the game – so they are made to obstruct line of sight and have cover elements in them, so that your troopers will be able to find some shelter from enemy fire.
The company, being located in Poland, has very affordable prices for those of you living in more affluent countries. As of writing this post, the HAB unit I got was being sold for 35 PLN, which is around 12 USD. The Fast Food booth was 24 PLN, which is around 9 USD.
Here’s their website, where you can find information about their exact items, prices and shipping rates: http://www.zenterrain.com/
If you’re interested in seeing their latest designs, such as the schematics for buildings I have used in this post, Krzysztof shares them on their Facebook feed: https://www.facebook.com/zenterrain
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- Dice Tower
Zen Terrain are not yet Corvus Belli partners, but it is definitely worth keeping an eye on them.
Got to have that bikerbar!
# None of the following makes Zen Terrains product a bad product it’s just information for any perspective buyer. This information is releveant to ANY of the MDF or HDF laser or CNC routered cut terrain on the market for use with Infinity!
Folks please note something here that althought the article states that this terrain is made from MDF its NOT!
This terrain is made from HDF as stated on Zen Terrains website a small difference but one to note none the less.
MDF and HDF are very similar products both being formed from wood fibre that is compressed in some way to form sheeting but are NOT the same the main difference is the density of the of fibre used to create the board.
MDF = Medium Density typically 600-800 kg/m³
HDF = High Density 600-1450 kg/m³
Note those tolerances start at a similar point but can vary greatly towards the end. The products both MDF and HDF differ greatly ALL over the world so as a rule of thumb neither is going to always be inherently better than the other.
99% of the time you can tell simply by sight what is MDF and what is HDF the former is often a cream like colour to it and has not discernible smooth surface while the later is much darker almost caramel colour and often does have single smooth edge and one rough.
Working with them is very similar however always seal them first with a primer or lacquer preferably not water based to help seal the wood fibre from future applications of paint and other forms of moisture.
Both will bend, flex, degrade over time and if mistreated bur up and break. This will not happen cleanly the board has no real natural stress point so somewhere within the compressed fibres the fibre and resins/glues used to keep it together will separate leaving you will what looks more like a badly folded piece of card or paper than a clean snap like you would expect from wood.
FYI I’ve just ordered €90.19 worth of products from Zen.
Part because I like the product range.
Part because thanks to this review I know they are fully cut mitigating many of the issues MDF or HDF have in assembly.
Finally up until the 04 of January 2015 its possible to get 15% off with a first purchase discount and happy holidays discount basically that means postage is free!
Looking forward to this build!
VisOne, glad you liked the article!
Thanks for the correction re: MDF/HDF, much appreciated.
Wieger, I think the bar is still being developed, do keep an eye out on the Facebook feed and you’ll be the first ones to know! 🙂
For me, ZenTerrain are the masters of so called “small architecture” – fountain, lampposts, benches etc. Hell, they even plan to make HDF bikes and motorcycles! That’s all is just brilliant – little things to make your table look more like a true city than just gaming mat.
Also, great cammo markers. Shame only 5 of them in only 2 colours – with new units in Ariadna I could now field 14-16 cammo markers with ease 😉
“the HAB unit I got was being sold for 35 PLN, which is around 12 USD. The Fast Food booth was 24 PLN, which is around 9 USD.”
From what I can tell from the website the pricing is in Euros. So which is the correct currency?
From what I can tell from the website the pricing is in Euros. So which is the correct currency?
Hi, you can easily change the currency by using the drop-down list under the currency tab on the left hand side of the page. At the moment you can switch between euros, dollars and pounds.
Awesome stuff, particularly their fences and guard tower (WHY IS IT SO HARD TO FIND GOOD WALLS?). I have an order pending right now, looking forward to it!
This is like the third article here that has prompted me to place an order with a terrain company that I haven’t bought from before 🙂
That’s good to hear! ^^
Looking at their Facebook page it would appear they are working on the internals of the bar. I hope this means the roof of the buildings are easily removed like microbes studio buildings so you can correctly continue play inside buildings. Looks great though and postage to UK is reasonable. Up to about £50.00 worth of items I want………
Microart studio …, darn you auto correct
I received my Zen Terrain order today. I got a building (I think it’s a 3 level or 3 pack), a shipping container, base toppers, and a “conversion kit” which is pieces to add to buildings to make them fancier etc. The quality *looks* really good although I haven’t checked for missing pieces or even tried assembling anything yet. The only bummer is it took a long time to get the order. I placed the order Jan 4, so just over a month. That said, it IS from Poland so maybe my expectations are off a bit.
From my personal experience, surface mail from Poland to North America can easily take over a month.
Last year a package took nearly 3 months to get to my buddy in the US… not sure which postal service is to blame, but reality is like that 🙁
It was actually the order processing that took the longest time. The package didn’t ship until Jan 30, so the transit time was less than 2 weeks (which is totally acceptable). In fairness Zen apologized for the delay and included a 10% off coupon for next time, but I guess I’m wondering if future orders would take a similarly long time or not. What can I say, I’m an impatient shopper 😀
All that said, I’ve assembled two of the buildings so far and all pieces were there and I love the look.
PS the instructions are also very very good.
Looks a lot like growing pains, then.
I guess they didn’t expected the popularity, and perhaps can’t get the stuff cut fast enough on the laser they have…
Yeah true. Well, it isn’t hurting them much in my case as I’m already planning to place another order. Really impressed by the quality.
It was a few factors that caused the delays, mainly the number of orders we’ve had during the holiday promo absolutely blew our expectations out of the water. Most people who ordered during that period and all through January got their ‘apology’ discount coupons. Anyway we do cut things per order for the time being so it’s bound to take some time to produce the stuff, and when the amount of cutting is excessive it’s bound to have some impact on the production time (especially when you’re on holiday during your promotion…:).
Personally I have to say that our customers were really forgiving and laid back about the delays (bar a few exceptions but even those were all in a good manner). My idea of a customer service is simple: ‘do it the way you would like to be served’ and I think it works.
At the end of the day I’m glad you are happy with the product and that you will be a returning customer, we’ll make sure you’ll get your stuff quicker next time around.
Glad to see ZEN found their way to this post 🙂
Regarding the prices – I was doing the calculations of the top of my head and they were valid at the time, which with currency fluctuations might have changed a little bit.
I’m a fan of Zen Terrain and it was nice to put together. Glad they are getting some viewage here on Data-Sphere.
What gaming mat is that?
The gaming mat is one designed by a mate – Vertor from Warsaw. You cna find him on Data Shpere’s forums.