Tablescapes™: An in-depth look.

Lo folks, the other tablescapes post got a bit long so I decided to move the in depth look on the set to this post. Again, this is taken with a mobile phone camera so I'm really sorry about the quality of the pictures. This post is mostly just pictures, my comments will be nominal, this is for people who want to see every tile.

I got two sets of tabelscape tiles, the rolling fields and the scrapyard. Each of them sixteen tiles. Now the rolling field comes in two of each kind, while every tile in the scrapyard is a unique piece. But lets start with the rolling fields tiles.

 Here we have what I have dubbed Rolling Fields #1 (that's not hashtag one kids that's number one), not much to say It's a nice open tile.

Rolling Fields #2, much the same as the last one, but the details vary. 

Rolling Fields #3 Some rocks on it otherwise very open. 

Rolling Fields #4, some large rocks, I think of this as a lightly obstructed tile when trying to balance the sides. Of course this is the tile that is most obstructed in the rolling fields set.

Rolling field  #5, open if with a natural hill or slope.

Rolling Fields #6, first Rivertile, the shallow but wide one. 

Rolling Fields #7, second rivertile. River bend. It's a nice tile but the almost direct 90 degree angle will make it look odd. Small rivers dont look like this they did deep and fast and don't "go straight except when they turn 90 degrees". I'm not really a fan of rivers as a battlefield thing at all, real life rivers in a miniatures scale would be wider than the entire table.

 Rolling Fields #8, the last rivertile. The deep and narrow one. Again, small rivers down even run over flat open ground like this but I guess I have to think of it as a man made ditch or something like that. 

Well that was the unique tiles of the Rolling Fields set there are two of each in a box. Now on to the cooler (if perhaps harder to find a way to use) scrap yard. Here there are 16 unique tiles.

Scrapyard #1, Open tile with some low detail. 

Scrapyard #2 open tile with much the same kind of detail elements as the first one but a different composition. 

Scrapyard #3, again similar elements bind them together but unique composition keeps it from looking repetitive. 

 Scrapyard #4 same comment as above.

 Scrapyard #5, sorry can't think of anything smart to say here either.

 Scrapyard #6 I am impressed with how so many tiles look similar but without there being one single exact duplicate.

Scrapyard #7 

 Scrapyard #8 Well now it gets interesting. And obstruction, I'd call this a light obstruction like the rocks in the rolling fields above.

 Scrapyard #9, again a light obstruction.

Scrapyard #10, another light obstruction. 

Scrapyard #11, a little wider obstruction.

Scrapyard #12, medium obstruction one of three of what I call barricade tiles, three similar tiles but with variations to make them different. 

Scrapyard #13 the second barricade tile.  Medium Obstruction.

Scrapyard #14, the last barricade tile. Medium Obstruction.

Now to the cool stuff.

 Scrapyard #15 is the first scrap hill tile and is the secondly heaviest obstructed pile in both my sets. I consider this a heavy obstruction and thus it shouldn't be on the same side as this tile:

 Scrapyard #16, the second scrap hill and it's the heaviest obstructed tile there is on these sets. 

Very well, this is all, now if you came here from the main post this is where you get back to it. (But if you can pressing back will place you right where you left off)

until next time.

Let That Be Your Last Battlefield: A Tablescapes™ Review

(For part 2 the in depth look)

Hello again folks, today I'm reviewing the Tablescapes™ (for my insistance of using ™ needlessly I refer you to my last post) tiles from Secret Weapon Miniatures which I backed during their run at kickstarter last year. Well now the tiles have finally arrived. They may be late I don't know, I'm more of th kind of guy who is happy as long as the stuff do show up, when is only really an issue if I need it for something where I have a deadline. And in this case I don't.
I backed it for two sets of 16 tiles, each tile is roughly 30x30cm (that's exactly 1 feet or 12 inches for you overseas types, now tell me how a bihexadecimal unit system is better than the SI one), i decided to go for the rolling fields and the scrap yard. One for sci-fi games and one for sci-fi and fantasy games. What I plan to do with them I'll get back to near the end, because now you've had enough of my ranting, you folks want to see some pictures.
And "Hey, it's what I do" (Do I get bonus points for both quoting Star Trek and Stargate in the same post?), though in advance let me apologize for the bad quality of the pictures, I seem to have misplaced my real camera again so this is my mobile phone camera, and regardless of how many megapixels it has according to the commercials that's not a good replacement for a real objective.

(and here I  for some reason for a moment thought that since blogger and google drive are both google I could just drag and drop the pictures, how foolish of me of course I need to download the pictures from the google servers in order to upload them to the google servers, well I still press the delete key in order to delete files so I'm not entirely lost to mac thinking as of yet)

Well, here we have two very nice professional looking boxes. the rolling fields tiles didn't quite fill out the box they came in, but on the other hand the crap yard tiles, having more stuff on them did. These two boxes were also shipped in a larger box in which they fit like a glove. There was however a lack of packing material around them.

Here's one individual tile, each of them was wrapped in a plastic bag, the scrap yard tiles also had a back around every stack of four tiles too. And to all you bleeding environmental hearts out there, first of Sweden recycles plastic, secondly I have no intention of throwing most bags away anyway, once I've painted these tiles (Hey! I do finish painting stuff sometimes) they'll go back in the bags so they don't chip each other's paintwork while in storage. 

Here we have four tiles laid out right next to each other, just laying there they fit together this snug also notice how well they go against the surface (unfortunately that wasn't true for all of them, but more on that later)  and that's without any help. But that's not enough if you ask Secretweapon miniatures, no they think that since you'll be playing on these, you need them to fit together even better and that's where these come in:

 These are what I call clips, they're meant to hold the tiles together. I knew there would be clips but in this bag there was a pleasant surprise (They might have said there would be but I must have missed that).

These are the two varieties! I only expected the four way ones, but we got two way ones to hold the sides too, Or if you make small (60x30) two tile display board to fit in say a bookshelf (it just happens to be that 60cm is a pretty common bookshelf width, I might be showing you something cool relating to that not too far into the future) you go for only two way ones.

  This is how they work.

 Here's said two tile display board, upside down.

Here's one such display board with clips (the front one) next to one without them (the one in the back)

Here's how the four way clip works. 

 When using more than two tiles you fir the two way tiles around the edges.

Here's a finished 60x60 board, compare it to the picture above where the same tiles are just lying next to each other, now you can barely see the seams. And that's not just because of how crappy the camera I'm using is, I barely could in real life either. 

 Here we have a 90x120cm table laid out, and while the clips were great there is some limit to what you can put together and then expect to turn without  it falling appart and this is it, it fell to pieces when I tried turning it. I wanted to show all the rivertiles in one board and the size of my table wouldn't allow me to put the massive 120x120 table that this set could form using all tiles. Fear not I might have access to a 'slightly' larger table in the basement (the awesome thing with living in a commune with five other guys roughly my age is we have a table tennis table in the basement). But before I move I need to adress the issue of the tiles that didn't fit snugly on the table.

Before you watch I kindly ask tat you turn of the sound, I have never before recorded anything for publishing online, english is not my native language and so on, I sound like a moron.

You didn't turn of the sound did you? Well now that I've sufficiently both embarrassed myself and proven to you that the tile in questions really do wobble we can forget that that ever happened and get on with the issue.

Here's the tile, yes acute viewer will notice it's day most of these photos, but not in the video clip, the first clip was so bad I had to  redo it a day later. Very well Let's find out why this tile wobble (And not's not in order so that the Koch brothers can deny global warming but good guess).

 As you can see the edge has been dented in shipping. And it unfortunately wasn't the only one.

All these three tiles from the Rolling fields wobbled, as well as one in the scrapyard. I'll leave my comment on this for my conclusion. 

  Here I have laid out an almost full rolling fields table, unfortunately I forgot the first wobbling tile upstairs when I made this board hence it's fifteen tiles large rather than sixteen. This is without the clips. When Clipping a table this size you have to do it in segments. now if you make it right you do four four tile segments and then put them together similar to how I do below but here's a nice guide on how to make a nice fifteen tile one.

Attatch six tiles to each other with the clips sticking out one one side. 

 Then the same on the other. Then attach the middle tiles from above.

And voila, here's the table attached to each other, an almost full rolling hills set.

Then I opened the Scrap yard set and made a full board of that. 

 And last I combined them all (including the missing rolling fields tile) to one massive 240x120 table (32 tiles, 4x8). My only gripe with the design of the tiles is that the river looks very unnatural in straight lines like that. But some paint and water effect might change that.

Now this post is getting rather long and I really wanted to go into a look at each tile and explain the sets, so I'll partition that to a separate post which I'll link to here, and then go straight to the conclusion.

So what is my conclusion. Well having four out of 32 tiles crooked was a bit disappointing, but truth be told, I'm not mad, I have yet to contact Justin over at Secretweapons Minis and see what their policy is on bent tiles. And also, this is a kickstarter, and when moving such a massive inventory under the pressure of the product not even existing when you start means that accidents and mistakes will happen. How they handle those accidents and mistakes is what defines how well they handled the kickstarter. I am a merciless person when it comes to criticizing, if I feel there is a good reason to do so. But I am much more prone to criticizing concepts than to be harsh on a final product. Oh i'll gladly point out design flaws, but shit happens and that will only infuriate me if someone fails to owe up to it. And since I don't know either way I'll reserve judgement for the bent tiles for now (also the tiles shouldn't be able to bend, the truss structure on the back means that a massive amount of pressure should be required to bend the tiles).

Aside from the whole bent tile issue? Well aside from that this may very well be my final battlefield... ok probably not, I really like making boards and terrain myself, but it's still genius and I like it really much. Also take a look at the picture with the entire board laid out. In that picture there are four tiles that may wobble individually but because of the clip system and the stability of the tile system as a whole, it's basically impossible to tell which ones they are.

Now I don't plan to use them quite as such it was more of a cool thing to do, I plan to make two boards. The rolling fields I'll cover in brown and then perhaps some mud (texture paint, kind of like citadels stirland mud though I'll need a cheaper alternative) if I'm not pleased with just the texture the board has and then use static grass applied with something like the flockbox to make it into a real field (if a muddy one), the scrapyard will also get browns and mud (the same browns and mud so they can be combined if needed) but will get no static grass, you see mud is versatile in a way that no other basing is, add a few large flat bases of rocks and grass and you match the rolling fields quite well, but add something with snow and you got a half thawed snowboard, and add some cracked dirt over the wettest looking areas and it's suddenly a desert.

I'm also very interested in getting myself some of the city tiles from tablescapes™ not the ruined city the intact one. A small board of that with some dust tactics buildings and I can have a perfect setting for small rpg battles. But that's ina  future where I'm not almost broke.

Next time we'll be reviewing Myth by Megacon Games. Until then have a nice time.

I have returned!

Hello people it's been a really long time since I last posted anything here, well the thing is loads of things has been happening, my old computer broke and I could not afford to replace it, I also moved since I last updated... twice actually. But once was just to a different room in the same house so it might not count as much. Well now I have a computer again, one of my housemates let me borrow his old mac, I really appreciate it, though macs aren't really my thing, I'm more of a computer guy.

So what has been happening? well the First time I moved I shipped of all my miniatures to my parent house, where most of the stuff still is, in my first room in this commune I live in was simply too small for me to store them of work with them, my new room is much larger and thus I'll when I get the opportunity move most of the stuff back here. But that doesnt mean that all hope is lost, while I still was a wealthy person with a stable income I signed up for a bunch of kickstarters and now about a year later the stuff are finally beginning to arrive (all these mentions will have embedded links as I add the corresponding articles).

I've previously reviewed the Mutant Chronicles Warzone Ressurection kickstarter, and they have now sent me their second wave. I'll go in on more detail on that in a comming post.

I also helped Kickstart Myth, which I'll be reviewing once I've had a chance to properly learn the game (Our first attempt ended with us clearing one tile in three hours).

But the thing I'll review first is the thing that arrived last, yesterday to be specific. The Tablescapes™ * tiles from Secret Weapon Miniatures. I'll post my review of those in the coming hour.

Well see you in a moment.


*The reason I do the ™is because the computer I use now for some reason spout that every time I try to write a @ which annoys me to no end so now when I get a chance to finally use this quirk to my advantage I will, every time I do it's not becuase I care about trademarks but because I'm venting my frustration at the lack of being able to write @. Now of there are any mac users out there who knows why this is happening: Help my Obi Mac Kenobi, you're my only hope!