The Ruined City: Building Variety

After cutting apart one of the existing paper terrain buildings from the Dropzone Commander Ruinscape set, I found that I really liked that even some simple cuts can created fun new terrain options while still maintaining the “fold down” quality of the originals. I decided to explore this a little more.

The job is very simple with a few measurements and some quick cuts. Using the leftover center pieces as the inner bridge, it is just a matter of gluing it all back together.

Here, I took one of the largest buildings in the set and chopped it short. This was an interesting option as it is now the shortest building I have in my set while also having the largest footprint. It makes for a unique piece as aircraft can see each other over it while still occupying a lot of space on the battlefield.

With the leftover innards, I also made a sleeve to go around the smallest building option in the set to create another unique “building on building” option for more variety. I’ll want to edge marker the sleeve to hide the wrap nature but otherwise, this one worked out.

Next we have this unique tile. It is a popular tile in this set and usually always features some major battlefield component, whether it be an orbital laser or an underground hangar or a particularly critical building.

I wanted to keep the flat nature for those exotic options like the laser or hangar but regular buildings don’t work with my building templates so I decided to make an option for this tile specifically.

I went into Fusion 360 and started with the round concept to match the inner circle and made some easy “steps” to raise the whole element up a little. Game-wise, this will give more cover options to low-lying vehicles.

The Ruinscape set gives you two of each tile option and this being my second Ruinscape, I had plenty of spares. So I cut this one up to fill in the area outside the square center. That square center allows for a several different options and I plan to explore them soon.

The center piece has a lip on the inside so I can cut multiple flat tile options to go on there. I have the existing center to make the whole circle just a raised platform but I could see putting greenery in there to make for a little park or I’ve seen some interesting civic fountain ideas as well.

Of course, the main idea was to use a building and the dimensions were made to fit a tall building in perfectly.

While it wasn’t really necessary and will have limited options in the game, I think I’ll be able to get some good mileage from the piece as I explore the different center placements I can create.

Last up was the final “tunnel” piece I wanted for the board. With the two-level system I have going on the main way to get from level to level will be ramps. I don’t want the map to always be covered in ramps so I also came up with the lower level tunnel entrance.

This is a basic extension of my original tunnel piece, made to fit the lower level and sit flush against a bare wall. With the different tunnel pieces I have, I’ll allow for optional house rules to work where vehicles under a certain height can use tunnels to travel from one part of the board to another.

The concept will work like the Batman Miniature game where the unit will go off the map and reappear at another tunnel entrance at a later time. Since this can allow for much faster travel for most vehicles and offer a good amount of protection, I’ll likely have a table the player rolls on to determine how long it takes for the unit to emerge and/or if there were any consequences. Something like: roll 1d6:

• roll of 1: squad is delayed one round and came under fire. Squad suffers 1d3 Energy 9 hits.
• roll of 2: squad is delayed one round.
• roll of 3: Squad came under fire and suffers 1d3 Energy 9 hits.
• roll of 4+: nothing happens. Squad disembarks from tunnel exit at start of Round Up phase.

These are untested rules of course but I’ll be excited to try them out and see if they work out. I think the biggest thing is to make sure the tunnel entrance/exits aren’t unrealistically far apart for the amount of board space they will travel.