Star Wars Shatterpoint – High Ground Terrain Pack

"It's over, Anakin. I have the high ground." - This is what Obi-Wan said to Anakin Skywalker in Episode 3 - Revenge of the Sith, and that is name patron for the Star Wars Shatterpoint High Ground Terrain Pack. And it is a proper palette cleanser after some weeks in the epic scale to move towards terrain and something bigger than 10mm.

To give you a brief introduction, Star Wars is one of the IP that Asmodee holds and offers various games within the Star Wars universe. While X-Wing or Armada are clearly different, what is the difference between Star Wars Legions and Star Wars Shatterpoint? Legions is a platoon based game, giving you a small to mid-size army, including troops and vehicles in 1:48 scale (~35mm scale) with realistic proportions and Shatterpoint is even bigger than that, going for 40mm scale with more overdrawn, cartoonish proportions, but reducing the scope of the game towards a skirmish with about 6 to 8 models per side.

And to accomodate this kind of action on the table, Asmodee / Atomic Mass Games produced a new range of terrain. The High Ground Terrain pack adapts the design of the modules from the Shatterpoint starter set and provides additional buildings, ladders and floors to the game. For a RRP of 74,99 USD / 75 EUR (but you can find it for as low as 55 EUR) you receive a whole lot of hard plastic, providing you with a High tower, two medium tower elements, four bridges and a bit of scatter terrain like crates and ladders.

It is a card board box which has a supporting thicker card board structure on the inside to protect the multiple zip-lock bags with sprues in them. And it covers a single page leaflet, which aren't the instructions but a brief "Read this first" pointing you towards the instructions via URL or barcode. You have to download them, they are not included in this kit. The instructions come as free-to-download pdfs and are multipage. I highly recommend reading them from front to end before starting assembly, as some builds cover variants and you might glued items in place, that turn out to be modular a few pages later.

The High Ground Terrain pack covers a huge stack of sprues, as you can see below. The mostly come in a rectangular frame and have proper, crisp details with a minor amount of mould lines and no flash.

For the high tower structure you have four sprues, with the base level and two level tower.

The lower building sprue is included two times. As well as the topper part for the second story and accessoires.

The walkways have two sprues, with ramps and middle parts. The pillar sprue is included twice and ladder and crates one time.

As the plastic used for this models is not the "regular" hard plastic you know from Games Workshop or various Renedra products, but an ABS type (like in the Rubicon kits), you will need a different glue and I recommend the Pattex Special Glue, as it bonds ABS unlike the Revell Contacta. Tamiya offers an ABS cement, but I wouldn't choose the one with the brush, as it became gooey over time.

We begin with the high tower sub structure. The wall pieces have tongue and groove connection and receive additional stability once you add the roof. One of the sides has a display and a ladder to the first floor. I wouldn't recommend glueing the ladder in place, as it obscures the details beneath it. So just place it against the pins, paint it and glue it afterwards in place.

This building already provides quite a foot print, as well as proper height to even give cover to larger models.

On top of that a tower is placed, which adds another two stories to this building. It comes with an intregated ladder and balcony element.

Depending on how you want to store it, you can glue it ontop of the basement or just use the pins for connection.

The angled roof of the tower has a lot of antennas. As they are numbered you might want to place and glue them step by step and not just remove all bits from the sprue, as they are very similar and you could misplace them. The door has an interesting detail. The intercom can be built in two ways, flush in the wall or extended on an arm. As this is terrain and it looks a bit flimsy, I went for the flat variant. One piece less to break off.

As we have finished the high tower, be can move on to the next ground element. There are two one story buildings, that are used to connect the walkways. They are identical but I mixed the orientation of the side walls for a bit more variant. They come with a tongue and groove connection on the inside and are quite sturdy once the roof is added.

On top of that, you can add - optoinally - a second store with these extenders and floor pieces. The instructions show on the last of their sub-construction process the variants. So you might want to take a look on these first, before you decide which variant you want to build.

The walkways consist out of a middle part and two ramps and theoretically could be extended to your liking. The instructions suggest you use two ramps and two middle parts. I went for a bit more variation and build two regular ones (2 middle pieces), a short one (1 middle piece) and a longer one (3 middle pieces). The ramps have small lips on the underside, that connect to the rim of the floor pieces.

To provide more stability, there are pillars for the walkways. You don't need to glue them onto the walkways. I just put them in place and will use them depending on the terrain setup.

From here we are on detailling and scatter terrain. This piece is included two times and is a kind of sensor array with antennas on both ends. It can be added to the side of floors.

And then you have eight crates, consisting out of two halves each. You can stack them on top of each other or even glue a few of them together to create more cover. I spread them around the build and this is quite impressive.

There are a lot of ladders included in this boxed set, giving your models access to the different floors. You could glue some of them together to create two story ladders, but that is optional. I like to keep my terrain as flexible / modular as possible.

I am quite impressed so for. A lot of material in this boxed set, and reasonably priced. But how versatile is this kit, can I use it with different settings? Well, let's compare the buildings / terrain pieces with various miniatures.

The first picture gives you an idea how the different Star Wars games scale up. On the left, is a Shatterpoint miniature (this is a 3d printed Captain Enoch from the Skullforge Miniature patreon, as I didn't have a plastic model from the Shatterpoint range at hand), next to a Star Wars Legion Rebel and a miniature from the Fantasy Flight Games' Imperial Assault Board Game. The last one is with his rather 25mm scale a bit on the small side.

The second picture uses the new age Warhammer miniatures for comparison. A Primaris Space Marine, a new Horus Heresy Space Marine in Mk VI armour and a Khorne Jakhal, which gives you good idea if it would fit with the newer Necromunda models, and I have to say, this would work for the 32mm scale Warhammer settings pretty well, as not every world is a Grim Dark Gothic place.

The third picture gives you a comparison with the 90s Necromunda, StarGrave and older Warhammer 40k range. Still usable, a bit tall here and there, but an interesting addition that not screams skull bearing Warhammer terrain.

Conclusion

There are two target groups for this boxed set. The Shatterpoint players, who very likely will have the starter set and thus the core terrain set on their hands. And this is a perfect addition. And at around 60 EURs (I didn't see a single offer on undiscounted retail price online) a very moderately priced terrain kit. Even if you're not into Shatterpoint, for games like StarGrave or other sci-fi skirmishers, especially those making use of multiple floors, this is a really interesting addition to your terrain collection. Indeed so interesting, that I am looking into getting my hands on the Shatterpoint starterset.

The High Ground terrain pack provides you with a modular setup, that covers a lot of ground. The build was easy and without any problems. I highly recommend using the ABS glue, as the regular plastic glue won't properly bond the pieces together. Casting of the parts, who are made in China, was well done. Had no warped pieces, no flash and the amount of mould lines that I had to remove was absolutely within the expectations. In fact due to its non organic design, were pretty easy to clean.

I like the aspect, that it is very modular and the walkways connect securely through to the lips to the floor rims. Nothing is more annoying that moving terrain or walkways that slip of during game play.

Due to its scale I can even see this being used as an Alien planet for Marvel Crisis Protocol.

Star Wars Shatterpoint is a game by Atomic Mass Games and distributed by Asmodee.

The reviewed product item was provided by the manufacturer.