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 Yodhrin wrote:
Yeah, but whether that's actually a good deal or not depends on how important you consider terrain to a great game experience.

For me, it's vital, and MDF just can't compare.

Well, it depends on how you're assigning importance.

I also consider terrain vital, but specifically for its gameplay (and game balance) improving qualities. For those considerations MDF terrain is indistinguishable from fully 3D sculpted terrain (as would be cardboard terrain, or even an exhaustively thought-through system of fully 2D terrain painted directly onto the flat gaming surface). As long as the terrain system is doing things like blocking LoS, providing cover, restricting movement, etc. my needs are being met.

You seem to be specifically concerned about aesthetic pleasure.

A bunch of us take terrain very seriously.

 Altruizine wrote:

Well, it depends on how you're assigning importance.

I also consider terrain vital, but specifically for its gameplay (and game balance) improving qualities. For those considerations MDF terrain is indistinguishable from fully 3D sculpted terrain (as would be cardboard terrain, or even an exhaustively thought-through system of fully 2D terrain painted directly onto the flat gaming surface). As long as the terrain system is doing things like blocking LoS, providing cover, restricting movement, etc. my needs are being met.

You seem to be specifically concerned about aesthetic pleasure.

This is a hobby with 3D miniatures, not tokens, pennies, or wooden dowels. The spatial aesthetic is a fundamental part of the experience. That's why we aren't in a forum dedicated to wooden dowel games discussing the best ways to transport our blocks of wood.

I have been assembling Zone Mortalis bits from Dark Uprising for last two days and I have to say that I really like them. The design is clever and they are easy to build. That being said, if you are looking forward to combine them with Sector Mechanicus or Sector Imperialis pieces, you should prepare to be disappointed. Zone Imperialis has its own geometry rules that it follows perfectly but the only compatible dimensions with Sector Mechanicus are height of double walls and thickness of walkways.

Being mostly incompatible with previous terrain doesn't matter to me because the style is different anyway. I find Mechanicus scenery a bit oversized compared to miniatures, Zone Mortalis on the other hand is spot on.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Altruizine wrote:

Well, it depends on how you're assigning importance.

I also consider terrain vital, but specifically for its gameplay (and game balance) improving qualities. For those considerations MDF terrain is indistinguishable from fully 3D sculpted terrain (as would be cardboard terrain, or even an exhaustively thought-through system of fully 2D terrain painted directly onto the flat gaming surface). As long as the terrain system is doing things like blocking LoS, providing cover, restricting movement, etc. my needs are being met.

You seem to be specifically concerned about aesthetic pleasure.

This is a hobby with 3D miniatures, not tokens, pennies, or wooden dowels. The spatial aesthetic is a fundamental part of the experience. That's why we aren't in a forum dedicated to wooden dowel games discussing the best ways to transport our blocks of wood.

That aside I do agree with the actual substance of the post. Having some sort of terrain that looks decent is a big part of the appeal of miniature gaming, it help a lot with the immersion and is part of what differentiates miniature games from war gaming board games that have grids with chits on them. That said I don’t need terrain to be absolutely oozing with detail, in fact I often dislike when it is because it takes forever to paint. For the most part MDF looks pretty good to me once finished, though I do hate assembling and painting it.

jullevi wrote:
That being said, if you are looking forward to combine them with Sector Mechanicus or Sector Imperialis pieces, you should prepare to be disappointed.

You sure about that?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

jullevi wrote:
That being said, if you are looking forward to combine them with Sector Mechanicus or Sector Imperialis pieces, you should prepare to be disappointed.

You sure about that?

Spoiler:

That is really nifty, I might actually pick up a bit of mechanicus stuff to add variety after the holidays.

I was mostly interested in this terrain in order to recreate the FW ZM tiles and the card versions from the (soon to be) old boxed game. But the more 3D options are really interesting. Especially when combined with the other sets.

I've finished building all the walls, and to be honest, I felt like it was a little plain at first. But after I did the stairs, elevators, and railings, it really started to look awesome. I'm sure once I get around to the doors and pipes (and magnetize it all), it'll really pop. The stairs are easily the best feature of the kit.

I was a little disappointed that you need to glue the floor pieces. There's no way to use them without glue, so you need to lock in how you'll use them early on. Also, the way the floors connect, you can really only build the 9 squares centered on a pillar (it's all centered on a circular pillar tile, with T-shaped tiles coming off it, and L-shaped tiles for the corners). So, those 9 tiles (pillar in middle, up to four small walls in a plus shape, up to 9 tiles of floors) become the basic building block for whatever you want to make.

For instance, you can have the stairs go around a pillar, but not go through where the pillar would be. This is because the stairs connect to a tab found in the L-shaped tiles. More than that, the tiles are different sizes. The column tile and the T-shape tiles are larger than the L-shaped tiles by about half an inch. The stairs fit in the large tile area, not the small ones.

I was very surprised by this. I don't know why, but I expected all the tiles to be the same size. Just a simple grid. But this is not the case, with the foundational tessellating piece being the 3x3 tiles centered on the column rather than an individual tile. This is actually good because it makes for stronger structures. The columns are load bearing. There's not really a way to "skip" over a column.

The end result is that the ZM system is both less and more open than I thought it was. Your basic building block is larger than I expected, but you have a lot of freedom in how you make it, and everything kind of magically fits together (even when you didn't plan for it). It's actually kind of genius.

Can you "surround" a pillar? ie, the pillar is in the centre, and there are 8 squares around it?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Can you "surround" a pillar? ie, the pillar is in the centre, and there are 8 squares around it?

Sort of. There's three sizes of tiles in a 3x3 section.. The pillar tile in the middle is 2.25" square (which the pillar takes up completely). The small tiles are 1.88" square. Then the tiles which make up the plus shape have pillar tiles along one axis, and small tiles along the other - making it 2.25" x 1.88" rectangles.

The short wall tiles actually fit within the smaller 1.88" square (they are 1.88" x 1.75"). So, you can technically surround a pillar with short walls, but the short walls only lock in place adjacent to the pillars on the ZM tiles, and only in one direction, so the walls you put in the corner will move around. They will also have about a quarter inch of extra space on each side. So, I'm going to say you can technically surround a pillar, but it isn't really designed for it.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

jullevi wrote:
That being said, if you are looking forward to combine them with Sector Mechanicus or Sector Imperialis pieces, you should prepare to be disappointed.

You sure about that?

Spoiler:

I think that the point is that Sector Mechanicus stuff doesn't have the same width (the walkways are wider than zone mortalis ones) or length as ZM does. SecMec pieces starting safely on a bare spot on one tile (since they don't mesh with the ZM floor tiles) can't be relied upon to end on a bare spot on another tile. You can't plan on a SecMec Walkway extending the same increment as a ZM single or double wall, or wall+pillar, or pillar+wall+pillar.

A lot of the 'incompatibility' between SecMec and ZM goes away if you don't use the (admittedly very cool) new ZM floor tiles. If the floor isn't divided up into pillar squares, wall rows, and open squares, then it becomes a lot more reasonable to just put stuff where it looks good!

But that does put people in a bad spot with how to run ZM scenarios in Necromunda--but GW has already done that. They are evidently taking the card tiles out of production, and the ONLY other tiles available are the ZM ones, which are hugely pricey, out of stock right now, and which will require at least 2 sets for any ZM Necromunda scenario, plus probably needing WAAAAAAAAY more than 1 (or even 2) sets of ZM walls and pillars to play.

It's ironic. The new ZONE MORTALIS stuff is really, really not friendly or convenient for making Zone Mortalis games, either in Necromunda, or, god forbid, Horus Heresy, but it's freaking sweet for doing multilevel games in Necromunda, Horus Heresy, or 40K.

Yeah, fair enough. I wasn't planning on getting any of the plastic tiles. I was going to have them free-standing, and incorporate as much as possible with the SecMec pieces.

If the plastic tiles had been the same thickness as the SecMec walkways, or even just the ZM walkways, I might have considered it as it'd be a great way of making large platforms without the need to use precious, precious SecMec straight walkways. But it's got a hollow interior that won't work.

Cant you just file away the tiles bits that lock the walls?

 NAVARRO wrote:
Cant you just file away the tiles bits that lock the walls?

You can, but then you're removing the only thing that differentiates them from just getting a realm of battle board (if you want a textured board) or a gaming mat. The only reason I can see to buy the ZM tiles is if you really want to make sure that ZM walls and pillars lock into good, rigid formations. They seem fantastic for that, but unnecessary and possibly even counterproductive for other purposes.

If the floor tiles weren't so pricey, that wouldn't be as much of an issue.

The regular enforcers kit has been sold out on the US site for a little while. I hope they release the CGC individually soon, so people can expand their gangs. (I also wonder if they will get their own dice and card pack). I was hoping they'd be out for christmas at the latest so I could maybe get a couple boxes as a gift. I'm hoping to see them show up this sunday on the up for pre order next week posting.

 Thargrim wrote:
The regular enforcers kit has been sold out on the US site for a little while. I hope they release the CGC individually soon, so people can expand their gangs. (I also wonder if they will get their own dice and card pack). I was hoping they'd be out for christmas at the latest so I could maybe get a couple boxes as a gift. I'm hoping to see them show up this sunday on the up for pre order next week posting.

We have the schedule through December 16th, and sadly they weren't listed

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Thargrim wrote:
The regular enforcers kit has been sold out on the US site for a little while. I hope they release the CGC individually soon, so people can expand their gangs. (I also wonder if they will get their own dice and card pack). I was hoping they'd be out for christmas at the latest so I could maybe get a couple boxes as a gift. I'm hoping to see them show up this sunday on the up for pre order next week posting.

We have the schedule through December 16th, and sadly they weren't listed

SOMEONE SAID MOROOROROORODDHEHHEEIIEIEIIIMMRMMRMEMEMEMMEM !!!!

Me like

December's White Dwarf has :-

A Present For You, Necromunda Gang Tactics card
A 10-page gaming supplement all about Gang Raids, including four new scenarios for Necromunda

205th tactics card. Not sure I need that one.

The Necromunda tactics cards are pretty absurd.

If you take every card that isn't specific to a gang, and you stack them up- they're taller than a soda can. Someone had the bright idea to make most of the gang card boxes come with different cards.

beast_gts wrote:
December's White Dwarf has :-

A Present For You, Necromunda Gang Tactics card
A 10-page gaming supplement all about Gang Raids, including four new scenarios for Necromunda

The cover of which states: "Rule Booklet to play Necromunda in 30 minutes".

That could be construed numerous ways. I'm guessing they mean how to play short games rather than learn how to play in a short time.

I wonder why they'd do "play in 30 minutes"? Seems a bit odd.

Though I do like the idea of WD supporting the game.

WD has supported the game for almost 2 years now! Often with early access (unfinished poor quality).

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
The Necromunda tactics cards are pretty absurd.

If you take every card that isn't specific to a gang, and you stack them up- they're taller than a soda can. Someone had the bright idea to make most of the gang card boxes come with different cards.

The worst thing is that the official way to use the cards is still to take every single generic one and then the 12 or so gang specific cards and draw 2 to 4 of them for each game. First of all, no one has every single card, and even if they did, that is a terrible way to create a tactics deck since most of them are super-specific.

That's what I do, except I put all 204 cards (soon to be 205) into a single deck which me and my friends all draw from. My friends don't have any cards, so it is an easy solution to share. If we draw a card for a different gang, we simply discard it and draw another.

They could definitely do more with the tactics cards. At this point, it just isn't practical to have a random choice from so many cards. You'd need, at the minimum, some sort of drafting mechanic or deck building rules to create a 10-20 card campaign deck, and then draw your random cards from that.

Maybe integrate it into the campaign, such that you can purchase new cards (or draw three, keep one) to add to your card deck, or even tie specific cards to unit upgrades or skills?

Does anyone else wish GW would just release all the cards to date in one big set?

I'd rather they dropped the current card fetish, especially since they don't do it or support it well.

They need to supply them as a free download so you can accesss them and print out your own.