The Day of Parcels, long prophesied, has finally come to pass. Today’s mail included the Warmachine: Tactics Kickstarter character models, a package of Epic Eldar, and my Battleframe 5000 boards from Back 2 Base-ix 🙂
These things are pretty awesome. Here’s what they look like assembled…
The 300×300 boards don’t fit together quite as well as the 300×100 version – I’m not sure whether it’s just because they were the first ones I assembled, or if the pieces are very slightly out. It’s just a matter of trimming a tiny bit of timber off some of the vertical slats, though, so there’s no major problem there. The newer 300×100 ones are extremely precise, and fit together perfectly in all orientations.
Magnets were very easy to add, though I’ve been paranoid about getting the orientation wrong! Most of my boards will be glued together in two larger panels, but I’m keeping magnets on the edge so that I can attach more terrain in future, or use picture frame moulding to make a bevelled edge for the demo board.
I have four more 300×100 boards (63mm height) to assemble, and then I’ll put some figures on the board to test out gameplay considerations – particularly looking at movement and control areas, starting with models right at the edge of the board. If 2×2 looks too small, I can add another 100mm of width with two more rectangular sections.
In theory, 2′ x 2′ is an ideal size for a demo game: there’s a single turn of manoeuvre, and then combat starts immediately. If the first player runs forward, the second player might even get some shots off in turn 1. Melee combat usually starts on turn 2/3 – a huge improvement on spending multiple turns watching people moving about and avoiding combat…
For Warmachine or Hordes demo games I’ll only bother measuring a model’s Control area when they use their feat – after one move, almost the entire area is in range for focus/fury allocation. Fewer rules up front = faster demos, letting people get to the fun stuff straight away (i.e. slamming and throwing giant robots off the dock and into the water).
