Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Test building another modular tile design

Here are some shots of the test build of another tile system, designed to play at 1cm = 1" scale, i.e. printing 28mm miniatures at around 40% size. Each tile is made of a 6cm square glued to a base with some slots, creating a simple slot and connector system.


Tiles are kept together by fitting connectors to the slots...


This results in a mesh of small connected squares.


Here is a shot with some miniatures (from Battle Studios) printed at 40% scale.


At this size, I can fit three tiles per page, meaning I would need twelve pages to make the equivalent of a 3'x3' board. Each tile could be two-sided, to add variety too. I think that for 6" tiles -- to play with 28mm scale miniatures, for instance -- additional slots would be needed to keep the tiles aligned. Also, each tile would require two sheets of paper to build, so I do not think this design would be very good for larger scales.

7 comments:

Spacejacker said...

Nice idea! Easy to store and more sturdy than loose tiles.

Jay said...

I've been thinking of doing something with foamboard and matches like in this old homemade Space Hulk video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m006-laWr-U

Ricardo Nakamura said...

Thanks for the comments!

@Jay: very inspiring video! Those are really professional-looking print-and-play pieces.

Jay said...

Indeed, I've been thinking about doing something like that for a while. I like your idea too, might be able to work something with all these ideas.

Though currently I'm tempted to build some of the Hex Grid: Battle Tiles, to make a little configurable mat for some two hour wargame stuff.

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/84137/Hex-Grid%3A-Battle-Tiles

Really nice little product that, and I have a load of foamboard and full sheet labels so should be fairly quick to do.

Chris said...

Ricardo,
This is off the subject, except that it does concern another tile-type of game, which can be played solo: http://www.invisible-city.com/bulletins/506/space-monster-game-of-the-month-for-december-08
The author says it's somewhat complex, but I don't find it so. Upscaling the equipment used by the game (miniatures for the characters, actual tiles for the room and corridors) should improve it even more.
An added bonus is that this guy has invented many, many other games, all free.
I thought you might find this of interest.

Best regards,
Chris

Ricardo Nakamura said...

@Chris: thanks for the link, I'll have to take a good look at that site!

Sjeng said...

For those of you interested in Geomorph tiles, check this article. There’s a little contest that gives you a chance to win a complete set of Inked Adventures’ Geomorph Tiles. http://yeoldeinn-heroquest.blogspot.nl/2013/07/inked-adventues-review-and-contest.html