Sunday, May 24, 2015

Terraclips: Dead yet still alive

I started using Terraclips Building and Street sets for a city campaign I was running.  I grew attached to them for their flexibilty and low impact on storage. In fact, they sort of helped me make the jump into playing Malifaux. 

I always wanted to get more of the Street set but kept putting off until finances got a little better. I noticed last Xmas the the Wyrd site was clearing them out. Didn't think much of it.  I had them on my Amazon wish list. Then this year, when I wasn't looking, they became unavailable online.  I blinked and the whole line was dropped.  I freaked out, ran to my local FLGS and bought out what was there. 

A bit of a shame. The design was extremely versatile. It was perfect for a tabletop RPG.  Being able to put miniatures in a house where you could pull out a wall, or have some on one level while others on another made the abstract much more real. 

For wargaming, it was pretty good.  The big caveot I found was the thing that made Terraclips great for RPG's - multiple level buildings where you could take the roof off and resolve a separate fight from the main group - could slow down a Malifaux game. To get a miniature to the top level of a building could take an entire session. The best way to make it work was two have a two level platform or bridge, but little-to-no interior interactions.  

Here's an example of Terraclips in a Malifux game that I thought worked.  The idea was two buildings with second floor platform and railing you could run through the house to get to... or run between two houses or up a bridge / staircase to get from one side to the other. Here I used the two ramps to have a fountain in the middle. Note: the board doesn't include the 6" deployment zone.



The middle could be swapped out for something else. Here I used more an elevated walkway.  It worked out well, as long as you clarified you could not run underneath the platforms.



Here's one last set-up with the middle clear and ladders where the platforms used to be.


I'll do a post soon where I show how well it worked for RPG's.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

MCFA Show 2015

Haven't posted in a while. Have been painting - just not anything I've been proud enough to post.  :-(
I DID however attend the Miniature Figure Collectors of America show in Philly today  to get quick peek at some of the entries.
Mainly what l wanted to see was... if I took a picture with this camera-phone, would I get a picture that looked like the pics on coolminiornot, wyrd or reapermini... or would they look as unfinished as mine.
The answers I found:
1) most historical minis are at a much larger scale than I paint. So there's a lot more detail there
2) the halogen lights of the convention center worked for some quick but well-lit shots.  My house is always unnaturally dark
3) the details are a lot better than mine but I bet I could eventually get as good as some of the guys there. It just a matter of add pending several hours on that last coat of whitish sheen.
Some of the pro's though... jeez, they we're crazy good.
Mostly I took pics of the 28 mm size I'm used to painting as opposed to the 54 mm historical scale.   
A Malifaux mini! Jim Richey did a nice job on this one.

Wish I grabbed this painter's name.  Really impressive purple skin tone work.

I had to grab a snap of this Reaper Pathfinder mini just because one of my fellow party members is using it in our current campaign for his paladin.

This one is about 54 mm scale.  But zoom in on the detail on that robe.  It's incredible.