Hi again, we have ambitious plans this time around.

Did you ever wish that your X-wing battles took place somewhere a little more exotic?

"But OneKelvin," you say "what could be more exotic than the striking void of space?" And you have a point.

But I'm talking imposing crystals, desert canyons, towering forests, the depths of the 1313st level of Coruscant, and the host of other exotic places that starship captains have dreamt of destroying each other in.

Right now I'm planning on making a moon or city-scape terrain board, the majority of which would be flattish like the death tiles mentioed in this post - https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/135447-death-star-tiles/and which would feature a transparent surface raised a few inches above the buildings or craters to allow for miniature movement. What I would like however, to create a more "epic" feel would be for a few of the crystals/skyscrapers to jut through the surface and high above the play area as permanent huge-type obstacles.

Take the picture of Coruscant above as inspiration: lots of flattish areas above which fighters zip with ease, broken up by the most massive of the spires and towers. Here's the problem.

A board like this would work best with fixed terrain. and with several permanent huge obstacles the placement has to be perfectly balanced.

Here's a mockup.

The red-bordered area is solely epic play, but any 3x3 section of the board could be chosen for regular as long as the whole board is balanced for epic. The red-tinted buildings are our scrapers, and the green-tinted area is our set-up zone. Get the idea?

With a few ships dropped into battle between the towers we get something like this.

So, what is the best setup? I don't know. How can it be done? The layout needs

1. To be 6'X3' in total.

2. To have at least seven huge obstacles placed fairly for both sides.

3. To be asymmetrical.

4. To have a 3'X3' section balanced for regular play with at three prominent huge obstacles.

Keep in mind that regular obstacle placement can and will still occur, as low orbiting asteroids or clouds of industrial byproducts for the moonbase or, as groups of civilian air traffic droids/drones/vehicles for the city.

All thoughts welcome.

Hey this is a great idea onekelvin! Question: whats the penalty for running into your huge obstacles? Or are they there just to break up flight patterns?

Hey this is a great idea onekelvin! Question: whats the penalty for running into your huge obstacles? Or are they there just to break up flight patterns?

Figured I'd treat them like immobile huge ships, they obstruct LOS and give you damage if you fly into/through them. (You did just fly into the side of a building after all. A little damage is the least you should get. You monster.)

They would break up flight patterns but being permanent one could plan for them much better than with placed asteroids/speeders/clouds since they will always be sitting right on their foundations.

(Edit. Of course suggestions are not only welcome, but encouraged. I figure you guys know what you're doing. )

I see exactly what you want to do, If I were nearby I'd know exactly how to build it too. I like the idea of having some buildings be taller and jut out of the clear table so you have depth control. You'd basically make a 6" deep table, and use some buildings that are 6" high every other foot or so to hold the table surface and serve as buildings, then make some that are shorter. For the tall ones, I'd build them in similar forms, and place them over the top of each 6" tall building and they would just sit on top so you could move them over the top of any 6" building and change the playing field if desired. I'd put a magnet in the top of each 6" building, then one in the bottom of each "extension" to help them keep still.

Cool idea though.

I see exactly what you want to do, If I were nearby I'd know exactly how to build it too. I like the idea of having some buildings be taller and jut out of the clear table so you have depth control. You'd basically make a 6" deep table, and use some buildings that are 6" high every other foot or so to hold the table surface and serve as buildings, then make some that are shorter. For the tall ones, I'd build them in similar forms, and place them over the top of each 6" tall building and they would just sit on top so you could move them over the top of any 6" building and change the playing field if desired. I'd put a magnet in the top of each 6" building, then one in the bottom of each "extension" to help them keep still.

Cool idea though.

This guy. ^

I see exactly what you want to do, If I were nearby I'd know exactly how to build it too. I like the idea of having some buildings be taller and jut out of the clear table so you have depth control. You'd basically make a 6" deep table, and use some buildings that are 6" high every other foot or so to hold the table surface and serve as buildings, then make some that are shorter. For the tall ones, I'd build them in similar forms, and place them over the top of each 6" tall building and they would just sit on top so you could move them over the top of any 6" building and change the playing field if desired. I'd put a magnet in the top of each 6" building, then one in the bottom of each "extension" to help them keep still.

Cool idea though.

I had the same idea after reading your post, although I hadn't thought of the magnets, that's perfect. I'd also recommend making your city as asymmetrical as possible, avoiding grids, and varying the size of city blocks.

I'd almost be tempted to keep the terrain looking relatively ambiguous, and then let people pick which spots were the skyscrapers during obstacle placement.

A little less flexible than actual rocks, but the possibilities could be glorious.

Awesome ideas-bet the end result would look amazing. You could potentially make it as near to "legal" as possible if you ensured the footprint/cross section of each "tower" equated to a standard asteroid size/shape. You could do this by altering the size/shape of the towers and, say, have spires/masts for the smaller ones, tips of domes for approximately circular ones and things like buttressing/walkways/balconies/landing platforms for the more irregularly shaped ones. Keeping the "place asteroids anywhere in the play area" deployment style equitable without having random "floating" towers not obviously contiguous with the lower cityscape would be more problematic but you could minimise this discontinuity with the design of the base layer buildings (most of a similar height perhaps?)

I suppose you could even use skyhooks or bespin-style tabana gas storage platforms or even thunder clouds to represent the asteroid tokens if continuity with the base city-scape was an issue using the building shaped ones. the buildings would look mint though if you could pull it off...

Awesome ideas-bet the end result would look amazing. You could potentially make it as near to "legal" as possible if you ensured the footprint/cross section of each "tower" equated to a standard asteroid size/shape. You could do this by altering the size/shape of the towers and, say, have spires/masts for the smaller ones, tips of domes for approximately circular ones and things like buttressing/walkways/balconies/landing platforms for the more irregularly shaped ones. Keeping the "place asteroids anywhere in the play area" deployment style equitable without having random "floating" towers not obviously contiguous with the lower cityscape would be more problematic but you could minimise this discontinuity with the design of the base layer buildings (most of a similar height perhaps?)

I suppose you could even use skyhooks or bespin-style tabana gas storage platforms or even thunder clouds to represent the asteroid tokens if continuity with the base city-scape was an issue using the building shaped ones. the buildings would look mint though if you could pull it off...

What if the board had, say, 4-5 permanent supports (magnet at top) and a magnetic baseplate?

Then you'd have various <=6" buildings that would stay on the bottom plate, but the 6' ones would also have a magnet on top, so you could position them under the "obstacle" buildings.

Here's the easy and quick version -- get a mat printed with your city, then make spires/buildings that could be placed like our current asteroids. Add a few special rules for running into buildings (i.e., more than just a random boom or kaboom 1 damage) and you are done.

Of course, the hard version with your transparent surface would be much nicer, but a lot more work ...