@CWO:
@Young:
4. It is my understanding that at least 90% of all terrain will be flat enough to contain units and chips
5. and it is my understanding that the whole table with all it’s elements will be hard as rock allowing good interaction between pieces and terrain.
I’m a bit confused because I’ve just had a look at the “Malta blowup box” in the teaser pics you posted on your Twitter account. Perhaps I’m wrong, but as far as I can tell there’s nothing flat (which I interpret as meaning completely level) or hard (which I interpret as meaning a surface that has no “yield” at all when you press on it) about the land section. Much of the terrain consists of simulated earth and simulated grass (created using the kind of soft materials that are used by a friend of mine who’s a model railroader), on which the infantry unit and the tank and the fighter (especially the fighter) are perched at odd angles. The infantry sculpt is resting on a pile of chips, which basically doubles the diameter of the sculpt’s round base, so it’s not clear how well the unit would stand up by itself. There are also some simulated hedges and bushes, which are quite high and which presumably fall into the 10% of the map that you’ve said is not flat enough to hold units – but as far as the other 90% goesn the only parts that seem to be relatively flat (compared to the land sections) are the sections depicting water. The water has a wave-like scallopped structure which certainly looks fantastic, and which should not be a problem for most ship sculpts, but which might cause the narrow and tippy submarine sculpts to keel over if they’re placed parallel to the waves rather than perpendicular to them.
Just to be clear, I think that the sample section of the 3-D map looks terrific; it’s probably the most gorgeous terrain map I’ve ever seen, and DCC is clearly very talented. And from what you’ve said, it sounds as if you’ve raised these various issues with DCC already in a satisfactory way.
Hello CWO, (and everyone)
This is actually my first ever post on the forums… lol Yes indeed YG asked me over and over if that terrain would be suitable for game play.
I will try to explain the best I can, how I can assert that this should work just fine:
A) For the sake of explanations, I will always refer to the Malta sample pictures that YG posted on his twitter account.
B) When YG refers to 90% flat, what is meant by this statement is that the “bumps” made to give texture to the terrain will not have an angle where the chips or stacks or miniatures will flip.
C) As for the rigidity of the map, although the “core” is made of pink insulation Styrofoam, the entire land mass is then covered with plaster (that will be meshed reinforced)
D) grass, tree, etc… if you look at the Malta pics, you will see that all the ground cover, at the exception of the “tree lines” are about as thick as a sheet of paper… definitely not bouncy. When comes to tree lines, once that flocking is applied, it is coated several time with binding agent (also known as white glue + water) making it hard as a rock after a few coats and the mix is 100% transparent)
E) The wave’s height and frequency will be adjusted to allow even a sub to be just fine… and the waves, just like ground cover, are covered with layers of another binding agent (in this instance Modpudge) making the waves a solid surface as well (dont’ want finger prints embedding themselves in the texture)
I hope this answers your question :)
