A modular wargames terrain system that grows with your needs, accommodates numerous genres and scales and can meet any budget. How does that sound?
Go straight to our Kickstarter project page (
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/921886974/spartan-games-universal-modular-wargames-terrain) to find out more about the project and how you can help support us and make it happen!
Spartan Scenics (
http://shop.spartangames.co.uk/SearchResults.asp?Cat=1942) is an established range of wargames terrain from Spartan Games, built from highly detailed, easy to assemble precision cut
MDF and acrylic, and supported by boxed sets of stunningly detailed resin accessories - all designed to maximise your gaming experience.
But our designers wanted more, they wanted to create a 'one design fits all' solution for tabletop gaming scenery. The idea was a lofty one: a solution that could grow with a gamer's needs (and budgets) and be flexible enough to meet their changing gaming needs! So having set ourselves this target we went about designing the nirvana of modular terrain systems.
This Kickstarter is to fund the latest innovation by Spartan Games and is:
Scale - the project starts at 28mm scale, but will grow to embrace any scale we want!
High quality - as you have come to expect from Spartan Games.
Flexible - designed to be built both vertically and horizontally, allowing you to build rooms, corridors and towers. You will also be able to create bridges between floors, towers, mezzanines and balconies. Use your imagination to also make arches, windows and doorways.
Requires no glue - components fit together using universal push-fit connectors.
Plastic - start building your terrain with highly-durable plastic components.
Printed card - start your terrain with stunningly detailed, double-sided card inserts to build your floors, walls and doors. The vertical supports make it easy for you to switch the card over, allowing multiple themes to be supported by a common set of modular building components. Initial themes include Fantasy, Sci-Fi and World War II, but many more can be unlocked.
Resin, acrylic and more - once the foundations have been set the future of your scenery is very exciting: it has resin walls, floors and doors in it, along with coloured acrylic and laser-etched MDF. This terrain is designed to embrace all formats. So start with our stunning card solution before planning just how 'deluxe' you will go!
Scenic Dressing Kits - will allow you to take your designs to an even greater level of detail as you add beds, tables, machinery, book cases, computers, traps and much more...
Easily stored - the system is 100% modular. So you can take it apart, easily store it and put it together, potentially reconfigured for a new genre or scale, whenever you want.
Support our project by choosing from the exciting pledge options we have put together. You can find a full list of pledges on our project page, but here's a look at a couple of the introductory pledges.
An example Dungeon Crawler Pack layout using Sci-Fi artwork
People love making dungeons, so here is a sample layout using fantasy artwork and components found in a Bronze Pack
This layout also uses pieces from the Bronze Pack, but this time more modern bricks and mortar (think WWII) artwork has been selected
6 reasons to support our project:
Early delivery - if funded, we will be able to sell our terrain through retailers in 2016. By pledging, you will be getting your terrain before anyone else.
Limited availability - many of the pledge offerings and rewards are exclusive to this KIckstarter.
Great discounts - get your terrain at prices below what we expect it to retail at when released next year.
We listen - we value feedback, so get involved and tell us what you think.
Enjoy the journey - get an inside look at the creative process.
We need you - we simply cannot cover the cost of production and see this project through without your support.
Want to find out more about our terrain? We've put together this handy pdf guide (
http://www.spartangames.co.uk/wp/wp/wp-content/spartanimg/Kickstarter-PDF_LR.pdf) to building your own terrain for you to download and read at your leisure.
We will be regularly updating our Kickstarter project page throughout the duration of the project, so keep checking back as new rewards are unlocked, to find out more about the design process and hear interviews with the team.
If you have read our project page and still have questions or feedback you wish to share, the best way to contact us is through Kickstarter or by responding to this thread. If you would like to contact us before setting up a Kickstarter account, e-mail
kickstarter@spartangames.co.uk.
---------- First Gallery Update ----------
Terran Alliance troopers board a Dindrenzi Frigate...
Adding a simple second level, with some acrylic floors...
Building standalone complexes is quick and easy. Again we use acrylic, this time for walls...
Same base connectors, but this time highly detailed resin walls and floors are added, along with some fantastic accessories...
WWII bricks and mortar this time... miniatures are from Dystopian Legions, but these could easily be WWII figures...
Same WWII pieces, this time reconfigured on the fly into a different layout...
MDF is a great medium for doing all sorts of wood effects... imagine this is a ruined mine setting for steampunk wild west!
---------- Find out more with 2 new podcast episodes ----------
Meeples & Miniatures - Episode 139 - Spartan Games, Kickstarter and Halo (Yes, Halo!!)
In this show, hosts Neil Shuck & Mike Hobbs chat to Neil Fawcett, Creative Director at Spartan Games. The guys talk about the history of the company and some projects that may see fruition this year. The podcast then goes into some depth about this Kickstarter project, and finishes with some news on the new Halo announcement.
http://bit.ly/1Cd3W2W
Element 270 - Episode 22 - Halo and Kickstarter
In this episode Giles talks to Neil and Lead Game Designer Derek about some exciting news: a new space fleet game for Halo, and this exciting Kickstarter project.
http://bit.ly/1zFKdt4
---------- A closer look at some of the artwork designs----------
So let's take a look at some of the artwork designs. Here's some of the doors, floors and walls either available as part of pledges now or soon to be added.
This artwork will help make some fantastic setups for Firestorm Planetfall and other games at these popular scales
Some more specialised artwork to help theme some of the rooms you will put together as part of your layouts
More specialised artwork - this time to help you set up an armoury that's already played stage to a skirmish or two!
Artwork for your classic dungeon crawl - perfect for fantasy
rpgs
---------- What scale? Any scale? ----------
That is a most interesting question to answer with this product. The simple answer is that it works with any scale. On the surface this may seem like an odd answer, but the simple fact is that one of the core design goals of this product is to make sure any scale, not just the ones supported by Spartan Games, are catered for. So what does any scale actually mean? The floor plates and uprights (which are the standardised components of the Modular Terrain) are going to be designed to be scale-less and genre-less. Over time we’ll bring out themed uprights, but right now the prototypes you can see have a more industrial/sci-fi feel to them. What determines the scale is the artwork and detailing level applied to the card, wood, acrylic or resin that is used in the product. Let’s take the idea of a 1 square by 2 square simple rectangle of product, which is 90mm x 180mm in size. Add the uprights and slide in some 10mm scale artwork and you have a factory unit. Slide in some 28mm scale metal work and you have a shipping container. Change the artwork again and you have a 15mm scale sci-fi airlock. You get the idea…
Let’s take it a step further. Let’s imagine you’ve pledged a Bronze Pack and chosen the initial 28mm scale Sci-Fi artwork. Out of the box you have enough components to make a great multi-room bunker complex, or a cool set of corridors on a spaceship or space station. If you like the idea of ‘dungeon crawling’ – or sci-fi crawling as is more pertinent in this example – then you can have a squad of troopers working their way through a complex, pieces being laid down randomly or as determined by a pre-plotted map.
But let’s imagine that sci-fi is just one of your hobby loves (and let’s face it, we’re wargamers so we love choice!) and your other passion is Zombie Apocalypse! Roll out the Gore artwork pack and add it to the SAME tiles and uprights. Suddenly you’ve now got a shopping centre or some other blood splattered setting.
But now it is time to go to your local gaming club and the guys are playing a Firestorm Planetfall campaign and the scenario you’ve selected is an Urban Assault – you’re going to need a bunch of buildings to fight over and capture. Roll out the 10mm Firestorm Planetfall artwork pack, and it is bye, bye Gore & Blood and hello New Proxima, a Terran Alliance city on the planet in the Tilsen System.
Okay, one final example. We’re working on an artwork set for what we call The Temple of Hades. In it you get a Bronze Level of plastic components, some stunningly detailed 40mm scale miniatures (come back soon and check out the photos of our cool skeletons!), 40mm scale artwork, a bunch of tokens and a set of Death or Glory skirmish rules. Suddenly the generic components easily rise to the challenge of supporting 40mm scale miniatures simply by adding new artwork.
So that’s it on scale. Our goal is to create a library of artwork that will allow a plethora of terrain solutions to be created; 10mm scale Sci-Fi, 6mm WWII, 28mm Scale Sci-Fi, 15mm Scale Sci-F-i, 28mm scale Victorian Super Science Fiction, 28mm scale Zombie Horror, 28mm Tunnels & Sewers, 28mm alien infested corridors, 15mm scale Victorian Super Science Fiction, 28mm scale WWII and the list goes on and on. But the core building blocks remain the same…
---------- Uprights ----------
A quick update just to focus on the vertical uprights you can see in our images. As you know, this is a prototype system and our Kickstarter is all about developing the product for release. The uprights you see in the images are not plastic. They are instead made from resin while we test the concept and experiment with various design ideas we have. The vertical supports you are seeing are fatter and more prominent than the final uprights will be. The final design will greatly benefit from the more elegant looking snap-together solution plastic will allow.
The fully developed product will lean more towards a nice, crisp, push-fit application with a cleaner, more simplified slot system. This will continue to allow it to work generically with different artwork. By doing this the runner system (for adding such things as acrylic, wood or resin) can be masked by the card artwork that is added. Over time, themed uprights will also be designed which can be seamlessly integrated into the system alongside the standard upright.
---------- How big a gaming table can I make? ----------
This is an interesting question and one of those ‘how long is a piece of string’ answers. If you spread the rooms and corridors out you can easily make a very large playing area, whereas if you compress into a smaller space, you can still have the intensity of layout, but take up a much smaller area. And of course you can go upwards as well.
If we think about a Platinum Pledge you get 60 tiles. So let’s lay some tiles out virtually, remembering that the base floor tile is 90mm x 90mm:
This image shows how a bunch of tiles can be spread out with interconnecting corridors to take up a good chunk of a 6’ x 4’ gaming table – 160cm by 120cm in size. We’ve coloured some base tiles to just highlight them, maybe they could be rooms in your layout, but as you can see there is huge amounts of potential. Perfect for a dungeon or spaceship interior.
Now let’s compress the 60 tiles into a tighter playing area:
This style of layout is tighter on the tabletop, and would be ideal as an interior of a bunker or house. Just drop the walls in place and away you go.
As you can see from these simple images the flexibility of the system is immense, and by varying the artwork the layout gains major momentum. If you look at our first image any of the 2 tiles x 2 tile rooms (180mm x 180mm) work well for 28mm scales, but with 15mm scale artwork that becomes a significant sized room.
One more image for you. This time we have taken our Platinum set, added the WWII artwork and also built up. What a fantastic free standing gaming aid – you can just imagine your troops fighting a valiant action to capture the buildings!
---------- 10mm Firestorm Planetfall Terrain ----------
Check back soon to see our exciting expansion of our terrain Kickstarter as we show you how our modular scenery can be used to create fantastic buildings for your 10mm scale science fiction games. In fact, our update will go as far as to show how the scenery sets will help you make entire gaming surfaces.
---------- Temple of the Ancients ----------
As promised, we've made available a host of exciting add ons with a Greek mythology theme.
Temple of the Ancients (please add £30 to your pledge) - 15 stunning 40mm miniatures, MDF tokens and a PDF of the Death or Glory Rulebook. Shield transfers not included. Skeleton poses vary and are supplied with a random assortment of shields.
Trio of Heroes (please add £15 to your pledge level)
Trio of Monsters (please add £18 to your pledge level)
Skeletal Horde (please add £30 to your pledge level)
2 Scorpions (please add £30 to your pledge level) - approx 125mm long and almost as high, these giant scorpions are not to be messed with!
We've also made a new artwork option available. Whatever pledge level you opt for, you may now choose Temple of the Ancients artwork instead of Fantasy, Sci-Fi or WWII. If you want one of the original themes in addition to Temple of the Ancients artwork, you can opt for the Bronze Artwork Pack add on and choose Temple of the Ancients artwork. Remember you don't need to specify which options you require now - we will get that information from you in a survey after the Kickstarter has ended.
---------- What is Death or Glory? ----------
The idea behind Death or Glory, or DoG for short, is fairly simple: create a set of skirmish rules that are quick to play, fun, colourful, different and provide a gaming experience that allows Legends and Heroes to be just that! We wanted to play games featuring mythical warriors such as Perseus, Hercules, Achilles and other Greek Heroes, but beyond that the game engine had to embrace many, many genres. One engine to learn – a myriad of tabletop options. Achilles one week, Robin Hood the next or maybe an Elven Warrior the next.
The focus of development was therefore to create rules that favoured the heroes and legends of past centuries at the expense of the common warrior. To make such heroes and legends quite literally deadly on the tabletop. BUT - and this is a big BUT - they are not unbeatable. If you charge a hero into a unit of enemy warriors on his own, with no support or strategy, it’s going to hurt - or could even be fatal! But use him as he should be - a heroic fighter - and he will carve his away around a battlefield, just as these inspiring characters do in the movies.
The idea is to use DoG to re-enact scenes from a movie, book or graphic novel, or make up your own encounters using lots of models. Whether you have Leonidas cutting a path through Persian Immortals to save an injured companion, or Jason trying to fight his way through skeletons to the safety of his ship, DoG is perfect for recreating such encounters.
Our first set of rules and statistics fit in the Greek world, where we start with the mythological world of heroes and monsters like Perseus, Herakles, Cyclops, Minotaur, Aeetes, Medusa and so on. Names of characters that invoke exciting ideas of recreating those pivotal moments in movies as the hero (or villain!?) wins the day. We look forward to seeing your adventures and hearing about your heroic adventures in the world of Death or Glory!
