First Post: Custom 3D Forest Ruins Map

First post since I changed this into a blog about heroclix,

Featured in this post is my Custom 3D Forest Ruins Map, the most recent custom map I've created.

When I started designing this map I wanted one I could use with the new Lord of the Rings set which had just been released so it needed to have a fantasy feel to it. I found my answer in 3 separate templates from worldworksgames.com



Hinterland Cliffs, The Garden, Hinterland Forest




This is what I turned out...

For those of you familiar with World Works Games you may already know that these templates are designed for terrainlinx which is type of tile template made to be able to disassembled and reassembled to create various layout.

You may also notice that my map is in fact one piece and cannot be disassembled. In order to pull this off I had to take each tile into photoshop and edit out all the blank connector patches and I also added a more visible grid to the tiles.

The entire editing process took me about a week's worth of my free time to finish. However actual construction of the map took me no more than 7 hours


The Cliffs:




The Cliffs have 2 different Elevations, 2 and 3 respectively. They can be accessed by ladders on the far end of either side. And offers a great view of most of the map, perfect for snipers.

The map's water terrain originates on the the highest part of the cliffs, waterfalls down to the lower cliff level, then waterfalls again to the river below.


The Ruins:

The Ruins are placed throughout the map and provide walls to hide behind and statue heads that count as blocking terrain. As well as vine plants that act as hindering terrain squares

The Forest/River:

The Forest and river take up the center section of the map.

The River provides ample amounts of water terrain which was important to me as I feel water terrain in greatly lacking in the official game maps.

The Forrest is dotted with trees and a few statue heads.
The smaller trees act as four squares of hindering terrain, while the larger trees act as one square of blocking terrain.


The Special Squares:



There are two spots on the map that contain squares with special rules (circled in the picture)

The One near the cliffs is "the fountain". It takes up four squares and in addition to the special rules (listed below) it also counts as four squares of water terrain

The One on the other side of the map is "the campsite" it is also four squares and has the same special rules as the fountain but counts as clear terrain.

The Special Rules: When a character ends a move action (that is not part of any other action) in one of the marked squares, do not give that figure an action token (any action tokens already on the figure are not cleared at the end of this turn)


How Does it Play???:

I've played many a game on this map since creating it and all in all it plays very well. No side has a true advantage over the other, mainly how well you do comes down to what figures you're using.

Flyers, Ultimates, Superman TA, Phase/Teleport, Leap Climb, and to a lesser extent Dolphin-symbol are your friends on this map. The map is littered with hindering and water terrain so being able to move through it becomes a problem if your you have to stop when you walk into it.

This map is not favored to either ranged or close combat figs, while there is lots of blocking terrain, walls, and hindering terrain to disrupt line of site, it also can hinder powers such as charge and HSS if the character using them does not fly.

The starting area closest to the camp site has somewhat of an advantage on the special rules squares as they count as clear terrain as opposed to fountain which is water terrain, However the side closest to the camp site cannot get to the middle of the map without having to go through hindering or water terrain at some point so traversing the map from the opposite starting area is much easier.

I wanted this to be a skirmish map one where you could have a large back and forth battle without any one type of fig (other than flyers) having an advantage.

That's the end of this post, the first of many. I look forward to posting things about my other
maps (so far I have 3 others made) and just about everything else there is to talk about Heroclix.

-Until next time...