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My first Malifaux gaming board, and scenary.


Paul Turner

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Hi Folks,

Wanted to share with you my efforts of making my first Malifaux gaming board, and the various bits of scenary I have made to go with it.

The background to this was I needed a new board for our club the winter hill wargamers.

I've been reading several posts relating to the subject and it seems like the more terrain you use the better the gaming experaince, as it creates a more ballanced game.

This seemed pretty important to achive understanding that the club members have picked different crews to learn the game!

Anyway I've attached a few photos of typical club night set ups on our new board, and i'm hoping you peeps can advise me if we are playing with the right amount of terrain on the board?

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The upper two tables look reasonably good, but by Malifaux standards are low-ish on terrain. The tables on the last picture are a bit too scarce on terrain.

The best advice I could think of when it comes to Malifaux terrain is: Approach it more like building a D&D gauntlet than a Miniature Wargame table:

- You don't need lots of space to move. You don't want too much open space at all (the tables on the bottom picture have plenty of it)

- Your firing lanes don't have to be long and span the entire table (since nobody has such range)... But you'd bater design them so that they provide tactical options when it comes to objective securing, table control and such - let the player choose if he wants to use them or not, but make sure they are where it matters.

- You do want hard to reach places to put the objectives in (not many of them, but one or two per table. Some impassable terrain around it, or a multi-storey building with doors, forcing the opponent to spend turns getting in... this type of thing.

- You want multiple types of challenge on one table. A objective in the building will be very easy to get for Spirits, but will remove advantage the Flying crews normally have. But if the other objective is in the open field, a shooting or fighty crew can secure it very quickly and Spirits have no advantage over there. In other words, differentiate the tables, so that each type of crew has some advantage in some area.

In the end the forests, wilderness, swamps and such will always look similar and the only way you can make the upper two tables more crowded is adding more bushes and trees to them. Small scale terrain to complete the marvelous bigger pieces you already have.

Malifaux likes city tables though and these are harder to come by. Take a good look at Terraclips for that purpose.

Let me ask you a question in return - how did you make these tropical jungles? Most of my "vegetation" is definitively moderate-climate and I've been thinking about making something more tropical.

Edited by Q'iq'el
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Q's pretty spot on up there. Malifaux should have a minimum of 12 pieces. Like bare minimum. It's really best at 18-22 pieces. I personally prefer to use a lot of smaller pieces to get to that point around a few bigger buildings or forests or what have you.

Do look into terraclips as well. Wonderfully easy and good looking sets to play around with. You need a couple boxes to really start seeing the awesome though. Terraclips really helps understand the terrain requirements and how enjoyable the game becomes when it feels crowded.

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Some of your pieces are too big. I hate to confuse you by disagreeing with anyone, but you do need to have space to walk and there should be some fire lanes (agreed that they don't need to span the table)...otherwise you give too much advantage to the crews that ignore terrain or are all melee.

Fire lanes are fine as long as there are small pieces that allow you to jump from cover to cover. I prefer that most of the terrain doesn't exceed 3-4".

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I agree with Dgraz - a bit too much large pieces of scenery.

for instance, in the first photo there are too many large pieces. try removing about 3 of those terrains and adding some smaller scatter (like fences, bushes, a single tree or a statue). There should be a balance between those large terrains and the little ones that provide cover but allow LOS.

Makes for more interesting gaming.

The second table (pic 2.) is much better - it has that graveyard with a small building and a fence...

but otherwise, I like what I see. This is such a visual hobby and for me scenery plays an equal role as a good painted crew..

Thanks for sharing

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The upper two tables look reasonably good, but by Malifaux standards are low-ish on terrain. The tables on the last picture are a bit scarce.

Yeah I knew I shouldn't have posted that picture!!! At this stage we were using the clubs 40k boards, which were 4 foot deep. We pushed the scenery into the middle and did not use the extra foot. The game closest to the camera was a demo with only a few models per side, where terrain didn't really matter as we were going over the game mechanics.

Thanks for the other advice, it's really helpful.

One of the club members has just purchased a terra clips building set so we can start to add that to our games. This will add the hight element which you mentioned, and I'm also going to start building some smaller pieces of terrain, which can be used to break up fire lanes etc.

I'm thinking barrel and create piles, maybe even a supply wagon.

The dense tropical plants were easy to make. It's a polystyrene base, with a layer of water down tile cement applied all over. Applied sand, to to parts on view, painted and added static grass. The plants are from a aquatic pet shop and just push into the base very densely.

---------- Post added at 06:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:51 PM ----------

Yep I like the idea of adding some fences, and statues, really good idea. Will go with some of the larger pieces!

Thanks

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- You want multiple types of challenge on one table. A objective in the building will be very easy to get for Spirits' date=' but will remove advantage the Flying crews normally have. But if the other objective is in the open field, a shooting or fighty crew can secure it very quickly and Spirits have no advantage over there. In other words, differentiate the tables, so that each type of crew has some advantage in some area.[/quote']

I think this is the most important point I've ever seen regarding Malifaux terrain. Very well said!

On another note, I love that graveyard. Where is that from? GW?

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Hoo! Those Tabletop World guys make some excellent pieces. I will agree with others on the price point -- not excessive for the obvious quality, but definitely not cheap. Personally, I am attracted to their furniture and supplies; it is very hard to find interior furnishings for buildings.

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