Have you ever wanted to get a mystery box full of hobby and wargaming supplies as a way of trying out new brands and ranges? Or do you just want the excitement of opening up a surprise box of goodies? Well, in this review we’ll be taking a look at the latest contender to the world of mystery boxes – Battle Box. The Battle Box contains an assortment of paints, tools, brushes and hobby supplies delivered to your house monthly.

Massive thanks to Battle Box for sending us out the first box to review on the site! This box is available to order until Friday 14th July – So make sure to check out their site if you want to order one!

If you would like to support Sprues & Brews then why not order more of anything you like out of the box through our affiliates Element Games and Rival Crafts

We also invited the Battle Box team on the podcast, which you can listed to just below

We have also filmed a full unboxing over on YouTube – Obviously if you want to experience opening it blind you might want to close your eyes now!

So let’s lift the lid on the Battle Box and see just what is inside!

Battle Box 1 Unboxing and Review – July 2023

So if you have not seen something similar before, subscription boxes tend to have a selection of random goodies to a certain theme that usually save you money and give you a taster of things you may not have picked up yourself – in the case of Battle Box this costs £30 and is filled with Hobby and Wargaming supplies from some popular brands. Let’s take a look inside

I have to say the presentation was really nice and well padded inside – which also helped hide any goodies until I pulled them out of the box.

First of all, let’s take a look at the various paper and sticker bits inside! You get a couple of nice Battle Box stickers that would look great stuck to your hobby case! What was also a really nice touch was a numbered Polaroid showing the box that you get being put together and packaged up. I think this is really cool and gives it a really nice community feel! Finally there was a card for a commission painter – the Battle Box team said they wanted to showcase other brands and independent creators and companies, and including adverts for them in the box is a nice touch.

But let’s jump into the contents, and we start with the big ticket item – a selection of Two Thin Coats paints. Now, if you area regular visitor to the site then you will know that I am a big fan of this range an they are very much my go to paints that i use on 99% of the models I work on, with other ranges only really being used if I dont have an equivalent TTC one! You can check out my full review of them here. The 5 bottles would retail for a total of around £20, so this makes up a big chunk of the value of the box and includes some of the absolutely excellent metallic colours too. If you have not tried these before, then this box is a great way of sampling them for yourself before committing – by only criticism really would be that its a shame a triad of a colour isnt in the box – for example the 3 complimentary red colours, as this would best show off what the range can do – but as a sampler this is a great selection.

Another nice surprise in the box was a size 1 Rosemary & Co Series 33 brush. These are brilliant brushes and are my current staple in my own hobby. Being sable brushes they keep a great point and stand up to a lot of abuse if you look after them with brush cleaner – These brushes cost around £8

And in a hat trick, the next item to be pulled out of the box was another staple of my hobby supplies, tufts from Rival Crafts! This is only a sampler “Handy Pack” with 21 tufts that retails for around £2, but it gives you a great chance to try these out before you commit to a bigger box (And if you do, don’t forget to use our Rival Crafts Affiliate Link)

Already, the combined total of the paints, brush and tufts comes to more than the cost of the box – so there’s certainly good value here!

Next up was a set of wound trackers from TT Scenics – These push together and are used to track wounds taken on models – easier than using dice that can often get knocked or mixed up. These cost around £5 from TT

And finally, from Deep Cut Studios a dice tray and a really nice Battle Box dice! this is a nice little one that buttons together and can be used for rolling dice in – again something that is nice to add to the collection and would be about £6 to buy seperately.

So what do I think of the first Battle Box? Well from a value POV, you get around £42ish of goodies for £30, so an additional 33% of value which i think is pretty good! What I really like about this box is that its all killer, no filler – very often these kinds of boxes have lots of end of line or clearance things in them, but here we get loads of things that I tend to use in all my hobby projects – Excellent Two Thin Coats paints, a brilliant Rosemary & Co brush and the trusty Rival Crafts tufts are all excellent additions to your collection and well worth the price tag!

Will I be subscribing? Well, I’m very tempted to as I love the idea of getting a mystery box of goodies every month to either enhance my existing collection or give me new things to try out. The quality of this box has given me massive confidence in the future ones, and I have high hopes that the Battle Box team will be able to sustain this quality! I look forward to seeing what future boxes look like

You can order this box right now, but you only have until Friday 14th July to get these contents – so if you are tempted head on over to Battle Box and order yours today!

Battle Box sent Sprues & Brews a free copy for review purposes.

Published by Matt Crowther

View all posts by Matt Crowther