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My local GW used to have some fairly nice gaming boards, but then a few years ago they replaced them with realm of battle boards. The new realm of battle boards look nice from afar, but are horrid to play on. They are sloped on almost every side, edge and corner, which has caused lots of my models to fall over and tanks to slide downhill. The plastic feels cheap to the touch, and the cheesy skulls in the ground don't go with every game system. I probably should have put this in dakka discussion, but I've mostly played 40k on these boards so I decided to post about it here. So does anyone else have a problem with these boards? Because I am not a fan of them

When done properly stuff shouldnt slide.

I got this board second hand for cheap, when I got it, it looked like this







It was horrid and stuff kept falling over as you said.

However with a bit of flock and some solid water I turned it into this

Nicely done man, amazing transformation right there

for exactly this reason (stuff sliding around on realm of battle boards), I've taken to adding a spray-on rubber coating to the bottoms of my bases. just that little bit of friction works surprisingly well at keeping stuff from moving around. I haven't tried it on tanks yet, but I imagine I could achieve the same thing with a bit of rubber on the inside edges of the tracks.

I love the realm of battle boards in terms of looks, but yeah... not a great surface to play on fresh out of the bag.

@daston: quality work, man. that table looks great

I cant stand the build in slope of the ROB, really limits the placement of buildings and other terrain.
Thats why I got a cityscape mat from zuzzy miniatures.

Yeah, if you're willing to put that much effort into making an RoB board playable on, you're willing to put in enough effort to just making a better gaming table yourself.

They're awful.

I could go on and on about the many faults, but I'll just highlight the worst one - a thirdf of the board is elevated, which doesn't give a cover save, and also allows you to shoot over terrain, which means that what you're shooting at doesn't get a cover save either.

Basically, the board itself exists to undo the use of the terrain rules. It's anti-terrain. You might as well play on a blank piece of felt. At least then your minis wouldn't slide around...

I hate rolling dice on them. If there's somewhere else available for rolling, I don't mind them so much.

way too much flock imo. it looks like a golf course.

Hideously overpriced for what they are. Not very comfortable to play on for all the above reasons. If GW made a VERY stable gaming table that folded up to about that size, then I'd consider buying it at that price point. As it is, it's cheaper to frame out a 4x6 piece of plywood and use that, or make 2 ft * 2 ft sections out of plywood and put them together with clips at the perimeter joints.

Basically there are a thousand and one ways to make a better product, for less money, without the stupid fething skulls.

 Lightcavalier wrote:
I cant stand the build in slope of the ROB, really limits the placement of buildings and other terrain.
Thats why I got a cityscape mat from zuzzy miniatures.

+1 for zuzzy boards. They are cheap, and look amazing even before painting. Also flexible, so you can roll it up and store it quite easily.

One thing to keep in mind, you will wait a long time for it to ship to you, they make them to order. I got mine after 16 weeks, but man, was it worth the wait.

The only thing I don't like about RoB boards are the price. If they were just $100 cheaper I would already have two by now...

I love mine. Multiple configurations, large enough to accommodate several thousand point battles. Love carting it around and busting it out and 'wowing' all the folks who have never seen one before.

I personally do not like them at all. Compared to back then when GW did their own tables, I find RoB terrible.

The old tables had personality and when I say personality I mean when playing on the old tables you felt like you were playing on another world.

RoB you have to put alot more imagination when playing on it.

When they came out I felt GW just decided to ignore several years of terrain building advice just to make more money.

 Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
The only thing I don't like about RoB boards are the price. If they were just $100 cheaper I would already have two by now...

Same here. I really like the boards, but the price is just insane.
I am glad I could get mine for 100 Euro.

Zuzzy mats are really appealing! Does the paint hold up okay when you roll em up?

I think the ROB boards are way overpriced, and don't dig the slope much - certainly don't have a problem playing on em though. Depends on how you paint and texture it!

Or Gw simply saw the fact that not everyone has the space to fit a 6X4 or 8X4 table in their house all the time so making a portable, sectional table that fits in it's own handy bag seemed like a great idea. It's not for folks like NuggzTheNinja who can apparently cut a series of perfect 2x2 sections of plywood, attach them together with hinges in such a way as they all fold up properly for storage even after being fully decorated.

They are meant for those folks that simply don't have the skills/time or hell the inclination to do it themselves. It's a convenience thing....it's not like when GW released it they came to your house and BEAT the knowledge of how to make a DIY table out of you.

As for other comments made....

1) the ridge line now gives you a 5+ cover save *assuming the hill doesn't outright block LOS*

2) When the table first came out I witnessed a rather large GW employee pick up another employee and jump on the damn thing without it flexing....cheaply made and easily broken it is not.

3) The old tables while really nice in the GW stores were one big solid piece and could go nowhere you know, all the inconvenience of a 6x4 sheet of plywood covered in poly styrene and other decorations..I know this from watching people try and get them out of the store to take home when the local GW gave away the old tables it was replacing with ROB boards.

Hate them. It's the awkward middle ground where it's got enough detail to clutter up the table and make placing models and additional terrain difficult, but not enough detail to really look cool. Insult to injury is that it's so close in price to the vastly superior FW ones, which may suffer from the same gameplay problems but at least look awesome.

Orktavius wrote:
1) the ridge line now gives you a 5+ cover save *assuming the hill doesn't outright block LOS*

The problem is that with most arrangements you have the hills around the edge of the table where they don't really block LOS to anything. All they do is put elevated positions in each player's deployment zone and make it easier to see over any terrain you do have in the middle.

I love my zuzzy mat as well, I sometimes wear it like a blanket because I love it so much...a stinky, drybrushed, awesome blanket!

I like the look of them, and the fact it's split into sections makes it easy to store for those of us without much room. Also allows you to adapt it for different size games. just using 4 of the panels for 750 games and the like.

However like others have said, models just don't want to stand still on the bloody things. I guess flocking is a necessity really.

Also would be nice if they released a bunch of different individual squares, so people could mix up their boards somewhat. The two extra flat ones they sell don't really count. I'd buy a section with trenches on for example in a heartbeat.

Oh, and of course the price is ridiculous, but that applies to everything GW make these days.

Modular table sections are a great idea, but the ROB boards are poorly designed with the nature of the hills and overpriced (more so even than GW's usual markup).

It's not even an original idea of theirs...people had been building modular boards for years before, just not too many of them.

Agree with the guys who love the RoBg, I think they're excellent.

Nice work Daston.

Did something similar with mine



Tut here if interested

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/359853.page

As to the comments on models sliding off the hills, I have rarely encountered this. Virtually all tracked vehicles have no problem as their tracks have decent friction to them, metal models, assuming not bizarley posed or top heavy never slide (I've had old 2nd ed metal Dreads stand perfectly on all parts of the hills), most plastics dont either unless they have unbalancing parts to the model (Ork Nobs with big choppas or Hormagaunts with frontal claws) and low centre of gravity models, Grots et al work perfectly. Add in some flock and you're winning.
I think its a complaint that has grown serious internet legs and anytime a RoBG is now mentioned its top of the hate list

As to the hills giving too much LoS or not having cover on them themselves, what sort of terrain setups are you using? Unless its a themed one I have lots of high buildings centre of table that block LoS and you can put bits and bobs of terrain on the hills themselves to give cover.
Hedges as per below



How are the hills giving an advantage below (barring the bunker which was positioned there deliberatly).



If you're finding the RoBG hills are changing games (or even heavily influencing them) you probably need to rethink your overall terrain setups.
How do they differ from a regular elevated hill or even building?

As to cost, sure they maybe are overpriced somewhat but as others have said they are a convenience option for those that dont have the time making a custom board, want a bit of elevation/variation (as opposed to a flat Zuzzy mat for example) and enjoy painting/designing them up.
I thoroughly enjoyed painting and designing mine.

I am going to save up the $350 AUD (450ish from GW direct) for one of these. They are convenient, look nice and from what I have seen, are good quality.

 Ratius wrote:
Unless its a themed one I have lots of high buildings centre of table that block LoS and you can put bits and bobs of terrain on the hills themselves to give cover.

Don't you see the problem here? Because you're using the ROB with built-in hills you have to compensate for it by limiting your terrain to large multi-level ruins. With a flat table you don't have that limit, and can use a lot more variety in your terrain choices.

I like the RoB as a travelling table. It packs small enough that it's easy to get into the back of most cars, you can pile loads of stuff up on it and not worry about damaging it.

I like it mostly for it's concept and customization. Being able to quickly change the battlefield by moving the tile or adding new times. The thing I don't like about it is the let down. You can tell GW had high ambitions for it, for the very reason I said, but it feel short of it. Maybe it was lack of sales, maybe it was cost of development, but it feel short of what it could have been.