I downloaded the Himmelveil Streets pack, and thought I would share what I have done with it so far. What I am aiming for is not the TLX System at all, and it is just at the initial stages, but someone might find it helpful.

I was after a modular terrain tile set for games of Malifaux, played on a 3'x3' surface. Buildings and ruins I have, but I needed a detailed playing surface, and Himmelveil seemed ideal. However, the tile system is based on 6" squares, with a complicated and (to my mind) fiddly mounting and tab system. Lots of cutting out of both paper and foamcore required. Having been through that before with apparently simple paper models (from WWG and Daves Games), I was not keen on trying it with 6" square sections with lots of cuts per side (total sides for a 3"x3" table made of these? 144, all with multiple cuts to be made and then scored. No thanks).

I decided to see if I could take the best bits of Himmelveil and make them into what I needed. What if I made 12" tiles and glued the 6" square sections to them, 4 to a tile? I could get around the need for tabs and mounting systems this way.

At first I considered foam core for the tiles, but due to the sizes foam core is available in, cutting 12" tiles results in a huge amount of waste. The A-standard of paper sizes are just the wrong dimensions. The A1 and A2 sizes are 594mm on a side, which is only a few mm too short to let me cut another tile out. I would need double the amount of foamcore. Foamcore is also available in 30"x40" sizes, which is great, but I could not find them in singles, only in expensive packs of 5 or more.

I wound up going with cork tiles. Specifically, I bought 9 12"x12" cork flooring tiles from Wickes Building Supplies in the UK (Sealed Cork Flooring Tiles Product SKU: 620950) for just over £7. They are thin but strong and weighty and – this is vital – they lie flat all by themselves.

I don’t want to glue the WWG printed sections to the cork. Glue is messy, time consuming and might result in warping. So I bought 50 sheets of white A4 label paper, with a single label on each sheet. Printing the WWG tiles onto this, the bit I want (the 6" square bit with all the detail on it, not the faffy mounting bits around the side) fits well within the label itself.

This is what I ended up with:-



Top left: the four 6" square tiles cut out from the label paper. Top right: uncut tiles on the label paper. Bottom left: a single 12" cork tile. I have already gone around the outside with the black marker. Bottom right: my layout plan and printing list.

I made up a layout plan (you can see it in the bottom right of the picture – click to enlarge), noted how many of each type of floor tile I would need (36 in all for a 3′x3′ table) and printed them off. Then I cut the first four out and blacklined the edges, to get rid of the white cut edge. I also ran a black marker around the outside edge of the cork tile and in a cross pattern in the middle, where the four 6″ tiles would meet – this would hide any gaps.

Then I just peeled the backing off the four WWG tiles and stuck them down. This is what I ended up with:-



The ork Runt Herder is just for scale, and the buildings are by Daves Games. Papercraft models mounted on foamcore.

Presto! A thin, portable, modular gaming tile for my games of Malifaux. I can even print and stick another set on the other side, to make them reversible Only 8 more to do, and then I will make some raised street sections/ bridges using the foamcore mounting method.

Very nice! I've contemplated making some 'larger' boards myself....sure, you lose some flexibility, but the extra stability could be worth it in my experience.

And the day after I make this, Wyrd Games and WWG go and do this - http://wyrd-games.net/node/95

Even funnier, I was just asked to make an SoH Malifax board for our local game group.

A finished photo:-



And with some buildings and minis (40k) for scale:-



Despite the release of Terraclips, I still plan to make some raised sections and ramps, and will make those out of foamcore.

My plans for the terrain set include making raised street sections, bridges, ramps and walkways. I want them to be modular (like the ground tiles), so they have to be on the same 12″/6″ proportions as those ground tiles.



This sketch (what do you mean, I have to explain it? Isn’t it obvious from the skillful draftsmanship?) shows what I have in mind. The two raised corner sections will be 12″x12″, with two 6″ ramps leading off. These can be replaced by stairs as needed. And if I build them.

Leading off into the city, will be two 12″ long straight sections, with railings, and a single 6″ long bridge section. Two more 6″ ramps complete the set.

After that, add buildings and other terrain pieces, and it should be a pretty good table to play on.

After making the sketch above, I looked at the 12″ straight sections and decided they blocked line of sight a little too much, even for me. So, I will add a bridge to one of them.

(A quick recap of The Method: print the PDF files on plain white A4 label paper; cut out the required images, leaving all the fiddly tabs and connector pieces; peel label paper off and stick down to 5mm foamcore; cut out and assemble.)

Building a 12″ Straight

My first effort did not impress or, for that matter, succeed.

I drew up my plans to print out wall, railing and ground sections on the label paper I am using, with the intention that the straight section be 12″ long x 6″ wide x 2″ high. Unfortunately, I had not taken into account the fact that in the Terrainlinx range from WorldWorksGames, the wall sections are only 6″ wide once you add the supporting pillars at either end. The actual “wall” part of the wall is only 5.25″ long. I built it anyway, just to get a feel for it, but with the dimensions not matching the 6″ x 6″ grid of the ground tiles, it was never going to work.

That said, it taught me a few things about the process:-

Think about the directions of the patterns on the plain ground tiles, so that if you have to cut them, you cut them in such a way that the patterns still line up.
On the railings, the inner and outer railings are different, both in appearance and size. They are not interchangeable.
If you have a wall section that is made up of two wall pieces and two railing pieces, stick all four pieces down to the foamcore and cut them out as one piece. Incredibly, I forgot to do this, and cut each individual piece out!
Make sure and black-edge your pieces (run a Sharpy round the cut edge of the paper) before sticking them down. White edges stick out and ruin the look much more than you might think. Trust me on this one.

So, I did some maths (I know!), and worked out I needed to scale the wall sections and the bridge sections by 114% when I printed them. So I did. That makes the walls 2.25″ tall, but all you need to do is cut off the excess when trimming the piece out of the label paper. You won’t notice the missing .25″.

Then I sat down and made a detailed sketch of the piece, to work out the exact dimensions of each part so that they would all fit together with an overall dimension of 12″ x 6″. This means thinking about how the walls and floor will join where there is no railing, and how the walls will join with one another at the corners.

This was the result after all the cutting:-





And the side with the printed labels on. There is no terrain job that should not be tackled with tea. This job was a two-cup problem.

If you want to know what a rabbet/ rebate is (although if you watch the New Yankee Workshop, you’ll know this already) go here (Wikipedia). Each one is exactly the width of the foamcore piece it attaches to (5mm) and you just carefully cut through the card and the foam, leaving the other card side untouched. It is actually easier than it sounds.

After that I tried a dry fit, and then assembled it with PVA glue:-



And this is what it looks like on the ground tiles I made earlier:-

Really Nice!

I will be doing the same things as the board tiles but for Mayhem. Got my label paper just need to get the cork tiles now!

Wow, that is REALLY nice! Good job! Oh, and I totally approve of the tea

I have been working on this - on and off - and here is what it looks like at present:-





I am using magnets to stick the ramps, bridges and elevated streets together. Two magnets pushed into the foamcore at the bottom of each piece gives just the right amount of pull to hold them securely in place, without threatening to rip the foamcore. The magnets are 6mm x 2mm.

That’s good enough to play on, but I will make a few more pieces to give me some variety. Probably some stairs, and a couple of elevated 12″x12″ sections.

Now you're making me consider the feasibility of using magnets instead of post anchors on regular TLX tiles.

I wondered about using magnets in the base tiles, either to hold the tiles together, or to hold the buildings onto the tiles (ie. like post anchors).

Holding the tiles together magnetically could be accomplished with 4 1" metal plates, placing one at each of the four corners of the central tile. Each plate would sit under the central tile and the three other tiles around it. Then I would glue magnets to the very corners of each of the tiles, on the underside. The magnets would grip the small metal plates, holding all nine tiles securely.

The downside is that this would stop the tiles from lying perfectly flat, as there would be metal plates and magnets at the intersections. You could cut out a section of the cork at the corners to take the metal plate, and then bury the magnets in the cork, but that is more work than I fancy doing.

Holding the tiles together is best accomplished with four pieces of blutac. Put these on the four corner tiles and all nine won't shift all game long.

Using magnets to hold the buildings is also appealing, but again you get into burying magnets in cork (or in whatever you use for your tiles). They need to be very near the surface, obviously, and simply putting them under the label paper might do the job, provided they are buried flush and well secured with glue. It is 16 magnets per tile, or 144 for the entire playing surface, and I'm not about to buy that many, let alone flush-mount them all.

So I will stick with a couple of magnets at the connecting end of each of my 'raised' pieces. Easy to install (just push into the foamcore, test polarity, remove, glue and re-insert) and cheap. Blutac on the bottom stops them moving around on the base tiles. Or, just place a heavy plaster tower on top!

Speaking of towers, I am working on a two storey tower, with a very small third storey and a brazier on top. The ground storey will be plain brick walls, and the second storey will be Citywall5, with the arches cut out and a floor inserted. Should be a nice centrepiece.

You can purchase .25inch square rare earth magnets as flat slabs, rather than cubes, that I think would work well. Then it's just a matter of positioning them correctly on the foamcore and inside the posts so that they click together. A pack of 50 of the magnets is usually less than $10US, but no idea on shipping.

I might try it, see if I like it. The way I'm thinking of doing it would still use the post anchors on the tile, since you'd need some way of covering up the little white squares on the tiles anyway, and the triple thickness of cardstock in that area would probably be helpful to keep the rare earth magnets from sticking too strongly.

It's a tempting idea, but might be more work than it's worth.

I think if you used ducting like I line my Fantasy movement trays with and then used the cubed magnets shaped the right size for the posts you may be on to something here......

Ducting is very thin (about as thin as card stock) so shouldn't impede things too much, in fact it would barely raise the corners up much at all, if you were that worried about it I guess you could cut one extra layer of card stock with notches where the ducting metal would go and glue that down first then the stock overtop.

I'm following this with interest as with premeasurement in Fantasy battle now, grids of 12"x12" don't matter anymore, and 12" tiles are pretty cheap. If not getting some thin hardboard and cutting it into 1 foot sections would be affordable.

I may get some streets and sewers layouts done after all....

EDIT: Oh I wouldn't use magnets on both sides, from experience those rare earth magnets are VERY strong, using it on both sides would likely damage the posts or floor tiles after a few applications....

Ducting sounds like a good idea. Originally I was thinking with magnets on both sides, the posts would just "click" into place, and not be inclined to move around much once in place, which is necessary when placing walls. That's the good thing about the TLX post anchors -- once the posts are on, they really wedge in there nice and securely.

I just hate the way the anchor arms lift off the tile after you bend them.

I have had decent success with galvanized flashing. It comes in large rolls at the home store (Lowes, Home Depot). The real problem is that you have to use tin snips and gloves to get it into the smaller sizes.

Found a much better way to stop models slipping on the ramps.

I printed another copy of the ramp top onto card and cut out slices at 1" intervals, each slice 2/16" thick. Discard the thicker sections.



After inking the edges I simply glued the thin slices onto the ramp. The models catch on them easily and stay put, and it is almost impossible to tell the slices are there unless you get within about 6".

You really have a skill for outstanding craftsmanship... sharp, clean, vivid, and all works well together.

I'm impressed to see the hirst arts tower on top like that. Is there any added reinforcement underneath? It's amazing how well it goes with card stock models.

Keep up the great work!

Thanks

There is no support under the foamcore piece the Hirst Arts tower is on. The surface is a piece of 5mm foamcore 6" square, resting on the foamcore walls. It is surprisingly strong.

I made a 12" x 12" platform piece last night, and while it is sturdy, I will put some reinforcement under the middle - probably just a cross-piece of foamcore a couple of inches long. It doesn't need anything more than that.

Hi,

Got my cork tiles, got some labels, but once cut the labels out can't get the backing off!

Any suggestions?

Heh - I was wondering when someone would mention this! Just take the tip of your craftknife and poke it into one of the corners. It is easy once you get the hang of it

When cutting out the labels I always leave a thin tab (1-2mm) to the easy-open edge of the label sheet, that I trim off after removing from the backing sheet. That way it's easy to get the label off the backing sheet, and the extra tab is no problem to trim off when I'm finished.

A little video of how the magnets work in practice:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOW3rxQJF-I

Each piece has two 6mmx2mm magnets in the base, inserted into the foam and glued in place with PVA. By keeping the magnets aligned properly, every piece can attach to any other piece. The pull of the magnets (which have two layers of card to work through) is sufficient to clip them together with a soft 'thunk' and hold them in place during gaming, but easy to pull apart without damaging anything.

Really great job! I love the utility of that system, lots of work but probably worth it.

It doesn't take long, actually. Black-lining takes up a surprising amount of the total construction time.

For the cork tiles, for example, if you spray paint them black before you begin to avoid having to edge them, you can make all 9 in an hour. If you use black foamcore, you can skip the spray paint, obviously!

The individual pieces take a bit of getting used to at the beginning, as I was being very careful with every cut to make sure I didn't make a mistake, but in the end I got to the point I was making a complete building, two detachable walls and two sets of stairs, all magnetised, in one evening

I bought the Himmelveil Canals set. I liked the idea of adding water to my city, but I didn't want the canals to be flat like the roads. Instead, I wanted them below ground level.

The plan was to raise all my terrain tiles up 50mm/ 2", so that I could then create canal tiles with the water surface below ground level. It turned out that raising the existing terrain tiles was fairly easily done with some blue foam sections. These come in 12" x 24" x 1", which is perfect for this build.

In these pics you can see the prototype straight canal section - a 12" square terrain tile with the water cut out and mounted 2" below the surface. Dock walls textures provide the canal walls. I put some Vallejo Water Effects on the canal itself (after experimenting on scrap pieces to make sure it wouldn't cause the label paper to detach or the ink to run). I plan another straight section and an open section, filled with water, with 4 possible canal exits - this lets me put the three pieces in a variety of configurations. I will cap off the canal ends with outflow or inflow sections (probably magnetised).

In these pics you can also see some new stair sections, a fountain and a small, walled feature, as well as the bridges from my last update.

This is pretty much everything I have built to date, all assembled:-







In the last one you can probably just about see the pillars at the canal side. These weren't an original feature (nor are they in the WWG set), but I found I needed them for stability - basically they stop the canal walls folding like a pack of cards. They also, quite handily, provide some much needed cover to any models splashing around in the water

Next up is adding some small-ish buildings made from cut down versions of Shellendrak Manor.

Very nicely done. I also like the little raised fountain/drain-hole.

Wow, what a great build! All the extra work was so worth it! Nice design, attention to detail and creativity. A+

That looks great.

That's incredible I absolutely love how you've handled the canal system.

Thank you so much for sharing your work!

This is amazing work! Well done! I can't wait to see what you build next.