There’s something special about this time of year, isn’t there? Something that makes you want to stuff yourself with mince pies, decorate any nearby trees and crack open packages to get at the goodies inside. While we can’t help you out with the first two, the Resin Equipment Crates are a great way to do the third one in miniature scale!

Available to pre-order now!

In a game of Deadzone, the playing area is scattered with equipment counters. These represent points of interest that you can collect or control during a game. Sometimes they’re items of equipment which you can put to immediate use in the battle, while at other times they might be valuable Intel that gets you additional Victory Points. Normally these are represented on the table by the card counters that come in the Deadzone box, but if you want to add a bit of realism you can use the resin crates.

A selection of unpainted crates and lids.

The set is designed to provide some cover on the board, break up line of sight and make your game look immediately more evocative. It’s an absolute must-have, and as it’s been produced by Antenociti’s Workshop the quality is superb. You’ll only need to do a very minimal amount of cleaning up around the edges and they’ll be ready to paint and play with.

There are eight crates in the set.

At the start of each game, you randomly place eight equipment counters on the board. These are chosen from a pool of sixteen counters, and this is ingeniously dealt with in the resin crates set by having eight crates with sixteen interchangeable lids. You just shuffle your lids face-down, fit eight of them onto the crates, and put the rest to one side.

Pictured here: Five Ammo counters and two AP Ammo counters.

When one of your models moves into a space with a crate, you remove the lid and flip it upside down – it now acts as an equipment counter. These are one-use items that you can use in-game or, in a campaign, save to add to your force’s stash.

Four Frag Grenades, an Intel counter, two Medi-Packs, a Smoke Grenade and a Special counter.

The equipment counters have varying effects; Ammo and AP ammo gives a one-off bonus when shooting; frag grenades can be thrown to blast enemies out of cover or off high walkways (if the explosion doesn’t kill them!), Medi-Packs heal injured models, and Smoke Grenades block line of sight. Intel grants an immediate Victory Point bonus, while the Special counter either counts as Intel or has additional rules depending on the scenario.

I can’t wait to get my hands on a set of resin crates. I love the way they work from both a modelling and rules perspective, and I think they make the battlefield more interesting. I’ll even be using them in games of Warpath as terrain – with the lids on, they’re great as generic scatter scenery.

What do you think of the crates? Let us know in the comments!