Hello dear reader, thanks for dropping by!
The title of the thread prettymuch explains what I am trying to achieve with this project. It came out of a desire to play some games of Zone Mortalis - after all, who hasn't read some of the awesome boarding actions from Black Library that are set aboard spaceships and space stations, or the missions to clear or defend planetside installations from some vile foe?
I knew I wanted to get a piece of the Zone Mortalis (hence referred to as "ZM" for sanity's sake) action, but I wanted to have enough tiles to cover a decent board - at least 4'x 4'. A quick visit to Forge World's site revealed that ordering this from them would cost me £350 - quite a little beyond what I'm prepared to lay out for terrain at the moment.
Undeterred, I was inspired by other people I'd seen online and all the scratchbuild threads I've read - I'd build my own! I began sketching up some ideas in my notepad at work (some work got done as well of course).
I started off by getting some idea of the scale used by Zone Mortalis tiles, and how they fit together.
I wanted to be able to cut everything to size fairly easily but hopefully have light and (reasonably) durable tiles, so I decided to go with foam core / foam board as my main construction material.
To achieve an adaptable tile, I decided that each section (2" wide) would be based on a back "wall", with vertical "buttresses" at either side, and in between these, some "panels" sticking out at the top and bottom of the walls, but not as thick as the buttresses. This would give me a simple to recreate template for all of my walls. I also decided to add a "roof" rather than leaving the walls hollow, as this would make it stronger.
My initial sketches had quite a bit of detail on, but I rapidly realised that I was making it overly complex and probably expensive to do, so I decided to simplify things and try to keep the cost down. As such, the three main goals of my project developed into these:
The title of the thread prettymuch explains what I am trying to achieve with this project. It came out of a desire to play some games of Zone Mortalis - after all, who hasn't read some of the awesome boarding actions from Black Library that are set aboard spaceships and space stations, or the missions to clear or defend planetside installations from some vile foe?
I knew I wanted to get a piece of the Zone Mortalis (hence referred to as "ZM" for sanity's sake) action, but I wanted to have enough tiles to cover a decent board - at least 4'x 4'. A quick visit to Forge World's site revealed that ordering this from them would cost me £350 - quite a little beyond what I'm prepared to lay out for terrain at the moment.
Undeterred, I was inspired by other people I'd seen online and all the scratchbuild threads I've read - I'd build my own! I began sketching up some ideas in my notepad at work (some work got done as well of course).
I started off by getting some idea of the scale used by Zone Mortalis tiles, and how they fit together.
- Each tile is 1'x1'.
- Each tile is split into a grid forming 36 2"x2" squares.
- The walls looked to be about 2.5" high (not sure exactly but it's not that important as long as it's roughly correct.
- Where a section it filled wall, it will somtimes touch the edges of the square (usually to allow doors to be placed between walls), but often has recesses, and will never overlap onto the adjacent squares.
- Have more than 4 tile layouts - variety being the spice of like after all.
- Make sure that doors can be placed between any squares, rather than just certain ones.
- Keep all the "faces" on the walls uniform in size and appearance, so that I can quickly and easily adapt them to form any shape I want them to whilst mass producing.
I wanted to be able to cut everything to size fairly easily but hopefully have light and (reasonably) durable tiles, so I decided to go with foam core / foam board as my main construction material.
To achieve an adaptable tile, I decided that each section (2" wide) would be based on a back "wall", with vertical "buttresses" at either side, and in between these, some "panels" sticking out at the top and bottom of the walls, but not as thick as the buttresses. This would give me a simple to recreate template for all of my walls. I also decided to add a "roof" rather than leaving the walls hollow, as this would make it stronger.
My initial sketches had quite a bit of detail on, but I rapidly realised that I was making it overly complex and probably expensive to do, so I decided to simplify things and try to keep the cost down. As such, the three main goals of my project developed into these:
- Keep it simple to do - so that I wouldn't get frustrated by overly fiddly processes when trying to repeat them over and over.
- Keep it cheap to do - so that I wouldn't make the whole project redundant by making it cost the earth (after all, I'm trying to save money here)!
- Keep it quick to do - so that I'd have a snowball's chance in hell of completing it before I die of old age!