The Terraclips sets are tremendous value and I'd thoroughly recommend anyone who has any interest in urban or building-based skirmish gaming to invest immediately. Everything negative I have to say about them (and there are a few negatives) is more than offest by what these kits give you. They're actually cheap considering what you get in a box and the quality of the art. They are the terrain I've been longing for for years.
I sometimes go to a local wargames club and the last time I was there two of the blokes were playing Necromunda, a game I vaguely remembered, liked the look of at the time, but never really played. What caught my attention was that they were playing with the original
GW cardstock buildings that were released for the game and that the cardstock was still in great condition. It got me to wondering why nobody had really taken that concept and run with it. Certainly you can spend a considerable amount of ink (equals money) printing off pdfs and time (also equals money in that you could have been working to pay for more stuff) gluing paper to foam board and end up spending way more cash and time than if there were ready-made cardboard modular pieces available, even at superficially high prices. Some people like to do that and fair enough. Me, I like gaming. I don't mind painting too much, but modelling rapidly becomes tedious.
Inspired by the recollections of Necromunda - I'd gone hunting for a skirmish game and latched onto Malifaux, wich seemed to tick all the boxes. Malifaux is pretty cheap to get into, isn't going to run to ludicrous expense even diversifying into different factions, has pretty slick mechanics and generally looks like a bit of a hoot. And then I started thinking about terrain, because although the Necromunda terrain was quite nice looking and had proven hard-wearing, it looked quite sparse on the table, especially as it was meant to be modelling some kind of far-future urban undersprawl. Anothe rproblem with dense urban terrain is that while ruins aren't too bad to move figures in and out of, intact buildings are often a total nightmare. Malifaux demands high terrain density (but kindly only forces you to find enough terrain for 3'x3'), and so I hunted around for some kind of fast and easy solution.
The magic of the internet directed me to Terraclips and they looked amazing. So I invested just under £100 in getting two sets. I got
Streets of Malifaux and
Buildings of Malifaux and two sets of the connectors. People online seemed to think only one set might be necessary for two boxes, but I'm a cautious fellow and it's my experience that in all human activity people massively underestimate the required quantities of time and materials for any given task... With these I had a pretty optimistic hope to build a complete 3'x3' board, but I did have in mind that I might need another set of the buildings, given I wanted them to have multiple storeys.
So then I waited for my Terraclips. While I waited,
I watched the online tutorial videos, which are definitely worth at least one view and looked at some pictures of what other folk had built.
Then they arrived. I began at 3pm.
Unwrapping and popping things from the sprues was fast and easy. I found it quicker to do that the tutorial suggested it might take (which was nice because I hate it when people underestimate things like that). I did damage one of the ladders, but that was the only piece and the damage was pretty minor. It was the first ladder piece I popped out and I made the mistake of removing the rung spacers before popping the main body. Don't do that. Punch the whole ladder, spacers and all, and then pop the spacers.
Okay, so now i had a heap of stuff. Heaps in fact. I put together all the ladders and the staircases and ramps. They went pretty easily, except the ramps which were a little fiddly. Once build, the ladders are going to stay together and the ramps are solid. The stairs on the other hand fall apart quite readily when picked up. I think they need to be glued (which means storing them in the box won't be an option, but it's no sweat, I can just get a bigger box.
Then I started making road layouts and buildings. And then looked at what i had and started again with another idea. And then went on a bit and added roofs and before I knew it, it was starving hungry and it was nearly 8pm and I ran out for a takeaway. When I came back I ate rapidly and poured a pint of gin and tonic. I dissassembled the buildings and rebuilt them, fiddled with the streets and then it was midnight and I had to go to bed - though I could have easily stayed up tinkering. By the way, at one point I spilt the remaining third of my large gin and tonic and it went on some of the cardstock. No discernable damage was inflicted. This happened because I was working on the floor and I'd consumed 2/3 of a pint of gin and tonic and was tired. There's probably a lesson in that.
When I got up the next morning I took apart everything I'd done the previous night and started again with an entirely different layout that you will see in the pictures.
I learned a few things.
First,
the connectors are intrusive. I know some people say they don't really notice them but while they're not too noticeable on the wall sections, they really do stand out on the flat surfaces.
This isn't the end of the world by any means but it's worth being aware of.
Second
you do really need one set of Terraclips connectors per box of Terraclips terrain, at least until you've bought several boxes. There's no way one box of connectors would do two boxes of terrain and still provide the pleasing solidity that is one of Terraclips many strengths (there's probably a pun in there somewhere, dig it out for yourself). I doubt two sets of clips would really be enough for three boxes of terrain, it might at a pinch, but I'm certainly getting a third box of clips when I buy my second Buildings of Malifaux box. Now if you were getting four sets of terrain , then probably 3 sets of connectors would be enough for a 3'x3' layout.
Thirdly - that you get a lot of balconies in
Buildings of Malifaux. A hell of a lot. To be honest, I'd rather have had only one balcony sprue and replaced the other with more walls.
I felt there weren't quite enough walls in the one box. Fortunately
Streets of Malifaux gives you quite a few walls that are good for basements and public buildings, so having both sets gave me more possibilites for building decent-sized houses. I wish both sets had 6"x3" floor sections as well as the 3"x3" and 6"x6". It would cut down on the number of connectors required for a start. On the downside, it'd slightly decrease versatility and increase pre-planning a bit (though I found myself wishing for 6"x3" a lot), and more tellingly it would likely increase the cost. And at the moment Terraclips are a bargain, I think. So I can live with no 6"x3".
Fourthly, there didn't seem enough of the smallest balcony railing pieces. I only did two balconies and I used all the smallest pieces. Given the huge number of balcony bits you get, the balance of shorts to longs seemed wrong to me. Also you would need huge numbers of L-clips do do lots of balconies, and given balocnies require multi-storeys, you're using a fair few L-clips just on the buildings... more L-clips required, I think.
Lastly,
you need to be careful with the connectors, especially when taking things apart. So far I've inflicted (very) minor damage on about half a dozen pieces through carelessness and I've torn a doorway section in two right where the arch is thinnest when removing it. This was my fault for rushing but it's worth bearing in mind that however careful a person you are, sometimes you will be pressed for time when disassembling the terrain and
while it's surprisingly robust, it's still cardboard...
I ended up with
a floor coverage of about seven square feet from the two sets. This included a raised section and two complete multi-storey buildings as well as the ground floor of a large building. I had enough tiles left to probably push another square foot of tiles but I'd essentially run out of connectors. So
for a 3' x3' board you really do need three sets of terrain plus 3 sets of connectors. In the end I was putting 'T' connectors in place of 'L' connectors in places where the extra joint wouldn't show or get in the way. I suspect this was partly just due to how I built the set but with the table as shown so far, I could not have done with fewer connectors. In fact I really needed more that the two boxes I did buy in order to make use of all the tiles.
So later today I'm going to order another Buildings of Mailfaux (I have considered the sewers, which do look very good, but what I really need is more interiors) and another set of connectors. A complete 3'x3' table will have cost me less than £150, and it will be total coverage of that nine square feet, no annoying bits of table showing through.
That's a complete bargain.
When I'm done, sometime next week, I'll update this and post up sone pictures of the final assembled terrain and what I had leftover.
But for now here are the pictures to date. Note that in the bottom right I have just laid some tiles as a floorplan for two small buildings with narrow alleys between and in the top right there is a gap where a more considerable house will go. Three of the four buildings are complete - the big central one with three storeys, the left centre smaller one that has two storyes and an attic level and a small house right at the back that has a ground floor and attic.
Tacticool always trumps tactics
