I got a set of each along with a friend of mine, and he built this in his hotel room afterwards:



I think I'm going to really like these things.

Nice.

How obtrusive were the clips? Did they stick out like a sore thumb? Or did you hardly notice them?

That looks fantastic. Heck, if a hastily-built product can look good on motel carpet, I can't wait to see how it'll look on my dining table!

Beat me to it. My fiance just returned from gencon with Buildings for me. Now I can't wait to get home and from work and build something. Looks great.

The clips stick out pretty badly, even still. It is the one disappointment that I've got with the product, and shows up more on smaller builds than larger builds.

They did look a lot better in person this time, however.

Just started popping out building parts and noticed that sometimes they just fall right out of the frame and others need a little "help". Those that needed help tended to want to tear at the outer layer. Did you see this with your kits? Or is it me just not doing it right. Other than that little niggle I am loving the set so far. Going to take it in the FLGS friday for wargamers to drool over

Edit: It was me not doing it right. If you make sure which side the cuts were made from and make that the front, then push from the back they pop out nice and clean.

On my streets set, I had one ladder where the cut was off by a small amount, but this ended up causing the ladder to fall apart after removing it from the sprue. I figured it was a flub because no other pieces did that.

Also, I noticed there are no 3x6 tiles? What was the decision not to include tiles of that size? A space issue? Just curious.

Looks great!

Color me jealous, for sure. Looks great!

Pretty darn good for a fresh from the Con hotel build!



On the ladder issue; Its just one of those unfortunate, random anomalies that pop up with any mass die-cutting process. Every once in a blue moon the die will strike in a way that creates a malformation in the punchboard. And since our dies demand such high precision, when those random bad strikes do happen it's hard to miss.

3"X6" tiles: It was purely an economic decision. Since we had a specific punchboard budget per product, we erred on the side of better potential modularity rather than giving custom shapes.

They are more noticeable on the flat pieces than in corners. I hardly notice the L-Clips and T-Clips, but when I use I-Clips on a floor surface, they are noticeable. Still, not enough to make me not love the product.

I'm considering putting down some sort of non-slip surface on my table and letting the floor tiles rest on that, without any I-clips connecting them. Will investigate this further and report back...

something like this would probably work well: http://www.amazon.com/Grip-Shelf-Drawer-Liner-Black/dp/B000KFSOFI

Funny you mention that. In many ways I'm still coming to terms with what TerraClips is capable of. I don't even use clips on the ground tiles if they are in a non-supportive position. In other words; clips are ONLY ever used if you're trying to create a supportive or floating infrastructure.

Beyond that though, there are additional prototype clip designs we'd REALLY like to make a reality but it will take some time yet to see how the market for this product ultimately plays out.

You mean like X-clips?

I'd love to see some E-clips. Y'know, for store fronts and such, so you can clip on interchangeable store signs.
And a clip that'll let you clip on tavern signs or lamps and such that'll stick out into the streets.

I had noticed that on my buildings set. 90% was cut perfect, but on some of the really small tight cuts it would not cut the last bit or you could see were the dies slipped ever so slightly on small cuts. Nothing most people would see, but having hand cut so much WWG stuff where a miss cut had increased my edging work I tend to notice.

That gripping shelf liner might work. I have used them to hold small pieces of wood when using a router when clamps would be too intrusive. Worked very good. It kept the wood piece from moving from the force exerted by the router. It should keep the ground and floor tiles from moving around.

Uhm, is that about the most you can get out of all 3 sets? Or was that just a sample? Seems limited, so I thought I'd ask, how big can the builds get?

woohoo 200posts!

Greyhaze, you can do much bigger builds than what is pictured. That's about a quarter of what you could do if you utilized everything from both of the sets pictured there. Probably more.

So, I took my Streets set, and looked at the cover:



And I tried to recreate it:



My initial build, shown above, was created on the grip liner, and used almost no I-Clips on the floor level. The pieces stayed in place fine with very little slipping. However, they weren't as level as I'd like. The places where I used a spare I-Clip or an L-Clip for a wall caused the floor to be uneven. I ended up adding in more I-Clips to the floor to help keep it even across the board. The grip liner was more spongy than I expected, and I would not use it on any build with more than 2 levels, or on a professional quality display build of any size.

One piece of advice that I wish I had followed more closely from the build videos is to start from the center and build your way out towards the edges. I think I would have had a much easier time planning out what sort of clips I would need, if I had done that.

With this build, I used as few clips as possible, and you can see several places where the tiles don't line up as well as they should. I went back later and added more clips and that cleared up 95% of those problems. The only remaining area that was a problem was in the 2nd level diagonal to the Ramp. It would not line up properly with the back wall.

The one big problem I had here was that I tried to use only a single box of clips with this build, and I found myself running short of L-Clips. I had plenty of I and T clips. When I got to the last few pieces, I ended up having to use T-Clips where I would have liked an L-Clip instead.

Don't be stingy with your clips if you don't have to be. The more you add on, the more they just blend into the scene.

When I finished with the build, I still had plenty of I and T-Clips, even after adding more for reinforcements. I still had a lot of tiles left as well.

One of the users mentioned have a problem with the ladders. Mine punched out ok, but when I tried to assemble them, I ended up snapping one of the ladders at the side bar. Fitting the ladder hooks into the slots on the Y-supports was hit or miss. The two working ladders are fantastic though. I love how they can actually hold a miniature on a rung.

Here is what it looks like with more clips added for support:

That's really cool to hear.

I'm hoping someone can back that up with pics! I'd love to see what can built with 1 of each set, just to see how massive this can be!

*gauntlet thrown*

Great build pics AsmodeusLore! Thanks so much for sharing your progress. Its actually quite a treat to see someone attempt the box art build. One of the great frustrations I had when doing box design was that I didn't have production ready TerraClips to play with (since it was still in manufacturing) but we needed boxes ready to roll, so I had to do an artistic render instead. Kind of a chicken before the egg situation.

Another thing I found with rationing your clips is to use T-clips upside down instead of i-Clips, whenever you're connecting a second level of floating tiles (so long as they don't connect directly to whatever is below). So in the above scenario you could use two T-Clips instead of the two i-Clips on that bit of elevated road.

TerraClips does take some time to get a feel for and a second build is almost always more impressive than the first. The real key to designing a pleasing layout with TerraClips is to break out of the 1 level design paradigm we're all so accustomed to and to push things into multi-level plains. A single level street build with a few scattered walls will have everyone focusing on the clips instead of your great layout. Once you break that mold, the clips just kind of fade away. Also don't be afraid to use the blank basing tokens to conceal clip points in more obvious areas.

Clip design is also something we're still hard at work at. Now that the system is working 100%, we'll be making further refinements to reduce visibility and general footprint as we move forward.

I figured that out when I noticed that the tiles on the Box Art weren't actually connected by Clips. I thought you might be doing some photoshop wizardry there to make the product look nicer. Glad to hear that it was more out of necessity rather than some marketing shenanigans.


Awesome tip! I'm sure I'll make sure of that if I ever find I'm short on I-clips. Hasn't happened yet though. Any tips for the L-Clip shortage?

Just use T clips for interior walls on your second levels too, I would think as long as no walls or anything beneath

Denny, are these new prototype clip designs something we can look for within the next year, or are you expecting it to take longer than that to get them production ready?

I need to buy some more clip packs, and I'm wondering if I should wait for the prototypes or not?

Definitely not something you'll see this year. The next production reorder will be standard clips. I can't give any specifics yet due to the hurdles we still have to jump through on the clip front. Engineering takes...a really long time.

Long story short, so long as there is support for the TerraClips line, we'll ALWAYS be making little improvements. The clips you see 1 or 2 years from now could look completely different (but still 100% compatible in every way).

Next will be angle clips? :hint:?

I'm thinking, maybe some type of hinge clip where it can lock in at a 45, 90, 135, or 180 degrees.

X-clips!

And I really want E-clips - so we can hang flat-against-the-wall signs above doors and such.