I've just finally played a Cerberus mission for the first time, trying out the new 3D buildings. While the strategy and visuals involved were certainly very cool, I was very frustrated by how troublesome it was to deal with the figures inside the building.

Fitting a squad inside a single of those half-squares was practically impossible. Doing so with a 5-men squad with a hero WAS impossible. On top of that, moving them around the 3-storey building was a hassle. You stick your hand inside that narrow gap, knocking other figures on the way, then finally you have to contort you hand in crazy ways to try and grab the figures and move them to their new location, dropping some on the way. It was hard enough for me, for someone with a fat arm it would be downright impossible.

Am I the only one with such issues? Have you found ways to work around these limitations? One thing that we started doing halfway through the match was to use just a single figure to represent the whole unit, leaving the rest at the edge of the board. This made things a bit easier.

when using a single floor its eazy enough to jam 5 guys on it but with 2+ I end up just sticking 1 guy on as a placeholder mini.

ditto.
when I was playing it i was hanging 1 model on the window to mark the unit, and leaving the rest on their card...

cool as the buildings are, they are very awkward to move models in/around.

The buildings are nice but they are impractical for play as fully assembled buildings unless you can remove a floor at a time or make them very large in footprint. Otherwise set them up as blown up building with two tall sides at the most. Then keep as little debris on the inside as possible to make the playing surfaces easy to put minis on.

Here are a couple examples of an Armor Cast build set I used for GW games. The board squares are 12" sq and the building foot print is 9"sq

We only place a tile row on a floor if we're actually moving to that floor, otherwise they stay out of the building.

Yes we had this same exact issue early on with the 3D buildings and it was very annoying.

My friend has all of his units magnetized on the bottoms for his carrying case. So what we use in general not even including just buildings is to use large washers to keep your whole squad together, makes it way easier to move your whole squad into the building cause they wont get knocked over or fall down. Also helps with just moving the squad in general during normal play as well. You can also get like some 3x3 inch metal squares from the hardware store.

Hope that helps

I tried the fully assembled Cerberus building yesterday and had similar issues - also had issues with one of the floors being loose and falling out.

We ended up mostly just putting one model inside the building and kept the rest to the side, and that worked for the most part.

We *oved the look of the building and also loved the new tactics involved, so I still think it's worth a bit of the fiddliness involved.

The buildings are aweful to try and use. Models are hard to place and fall off, not enough room to place a squad and hero and its ti fiddly to get you hand down through three levels. The actual component design is rubbish too, its almost impossible to make a building other than the 2 shown in the scenarios, why they couldn't have all wall, door and window sections the same size is beyond me. All they needed to do was to have one edge tounged and the other grooved for infinate configuration possibilities.

smith2332 said:

I am the friend Here is a pic of the bases I use. I've put magnets on all my bases and ues large metal washers of troop trays that way you can move the whole unit at once. " Settle down just showing the new magnatized troop trays. She is not really with the Zombies."

I ended up gluing full floors to the bottom of each section and filing down the tabs on top to make removing of each storey easier. I also added a foamcore roof and sanded texture.

Pros :

• It gives you full 9cm x 9cm sections.
• It keeps the "cool" factor of actually having all the minis inside where they should be.
• The building looks a lot more realistic and appealing on the table.

Cons :

• It makes for a slower game 'cause you have to lift up the storeys to put the minis inside.
• It takes away the modular aspect of the building, having glued all the parts together... guess I'll have to buy a few more buildings.
• Maybe something more suited for Dust Warfare?

Got a photo?

At work presently...

Check my blog for a WIP(see my signature). Will have to take pics of the finished thing eventually.

Eventually I'll come back and add details + finish the inside, but it's good enough for gaming as it is…

That looks pretty sweet, what did you use for the internal floor tiles?

Just a plain tile floor pattern I picked up on the web, copy and paste with photoshop and printed out B&W on plain paper… like I said, I'll eventually be coming back to flesh it out a bit.

Hairystef said:

I like the plasticville building. How do they scale up to Dust Minis?

Less bulky than the Dust building, as you might notice from the picture, but the figs size up real nice next to the doors. They are meant for O scale which is 1:48 in the US (funny thing, I didn't know that train scales changed according to where they are made…).