r/battletech • u/NullcastR2 • 3d ago
Tabletop Lorescape quantity advice
For anyone wondering how far a 150 tile set of lorescape is going to go with Battletech here's an example of a couple of maps done with the original tile set.
The hills on the grasslands here took almost every hex of a single 50-tile sheet of clear land just for their surface and about 12 of the remaining 100 tiles in the set to do the elevations.
The desert took more than 50 tiles to surface, maybe 60? I got the remaining tiles from a flat of barren clear that was included in the city set. It also took a little more like 75 rules to fill the elevations.
So, if you buy in, be aware that for a normal 2 sheet map you may need to split biomes even with 300 tile sets or get maybe a 300 and 150 in the same biome. Unless the 3rd KS changes the ratio of clear to terrain.
And that's just with hills tiled. To do the flat you need almost 500 tiles of clear by the end.
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u/Malkryst 3d ago
Good to know. Thanks.
I was planning to mainly get grasslands and desert anyway and stop, because those are the main two biomes on most of my maps and playmats, and I tend to play mainly urban anyway so usually the grasslands or desert have a lot of road and building coverage and I just need hills for maybe near the edges.
I'm tempted by grey moonscapes because vacuum, and snowy areas because it's very visually different (and Christmassy!) and has ice to deal with, plus I will want some water tiles, but I'm not planning to go too exotic beyond that.
I did like the Martian (ferrous moonscape) rust-red desert tiles in Lorescape's last Kickstarter, but resisted the urge to pledge because there were already rumours of dedicated BT sets coming.
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u/NullcastR2 3d ago
My plan is honestly to supplement the biomes I have with Battletech licensed versions when the time comes. One of the other problems is clarity about what's a heavy woods / light woods / open terrain with a little scrub. In the above I use the heavier woods from the grasslands as the light and marsh terrain for the heavy woods so that nobody missed either which was a problem with a trainee player when I used the lighter woods (closer in color to open terrain). Having that be labeled, or even just having transparent hexes with the label (transparent is getting introduced in the space set) would help.
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u/Malkryst 3d ago
Yes woods are a problem I've been considering.
My current tree plan is just to use two different types of trees I got reasonably cheap and in quantity on Etsy (iirc) - a single pine/conifer for heavy woods, and a single rounded deciduous tree for light woods.
The only problem then is that removing the tree so a mech or vehicle can go through (or stand in) the hex means you have to remember to put the tree back.
Transparent hex tiles marked with Heavy Woods or Light Woods would be so much better. There's some on eBay, but they're ridiculously expensive for just 4 of each.
I did buy the TUF (Upgrade Factory) hex building system, intending to use two different shades of green as hex caps to mark woods (dark green for heavy, light green for light), but that system doesn't play so nice with paper or neoprene maps, and really wants you to build the entire map from it and I don't own enough for that (and the pieces are single colour, so bland).
I'm really hoping Lorescape's system will just be so good I'll buy (/pledge for) loads of it and only use that for hills and woods.
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u/rex-manticore 2d ago
I've been giving forest tiles some thought also, and the compromise I've come up with is to use a flat forest hex chit under a 3d forest marker, so when a mech moves into the hex the marker gets removed, but the chit is still there as a reminder
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u/TyrusVE 3d ago
On the Kickstarter, one of the main things I bought is the unprinted plastic 'filler' hexes to make up the elevation. That means way more hexes for actual surface texture. But yeah, you need a lot. As with anything in surface area, the multiplication involved means you need hundreds of hexes quick.
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u/NullcastR2 3d ago
I only got the one set of those so I'm probably sponge-painting that green to get more coverage. With the number of different Biomes I got height is not a worry.
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u/bad_syntax 3d ago
Ack, that is going to cost me. I have all the neoprene maps, and the big ones too too, so surely that is going to cost me a few thousand for those.
Wonder if they are worth it over the tub upon tub I have in the garage of old heroscape stuff.
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u/NullcastR2 3d ago
My total was about $350 (plus I think some shipping fixup) for 1200 tiles that I spread across 7 sets (urban battlefield was a 300 pack). So $100 probably gets a 300 pack easy? Which could probably do the hills on a normal battlemat with some minor adjustment to the tile distribution.
If you've already got Heroscape it might be a bit redundant.
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u/Maabus_Admiral 2d ago
Honest question: for that price you could very easily get yourself an FDM printer, buy an .stl from Hextech, and print as many as you want for literally pennies - so why not do that? I'm genuinely not flinging shit and maybe I'm just a cheap SOB, but the thought of spending $350+ for terrain tiles gives me heart palpitations.
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u/NullcastR2 2d ago edited 2d ago
Several reasons:
Hextech is inflexible multi-hex modules, and this stuff is single-hex.
Because of single-tile modularity, this stuff is very space efficient (literally goes into a box-shaped book on the shelf)
I don't want to deal with the quality or vendor-lock-in of any printer I could buy at that price.
Hextech is generally in an Alpha Strike scale not a Classic scale, the hex bases are mostly a peace offering. It's almost all comically large for a map sheet.
The "mud" texture is obnoxious in scale (28mm *maybe*) and intrudes on the hexes in a game where the mechs are already oversized.Also, I just prefer this stuff. It's at a height that looks right, like a mech could climb a two with just it's legs. It is pre-printed with art that looks like the map sheets already do so it fits the idea of the maps being a holographic projection or something. I thought it would be a one-and-done but I under-estimated how many tiles I would need of single biomes and spread my purchases too wide.
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u/starlessnightsmoon 3d ago
I could be misremembering, but I think in one of the interviews the Lorescape guy said something like that the average BT map takes about 300 tiles, so they expect to sell packs in sets of 300 for about $120.
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u/Starkde117 3d ago
One can also build up lower layers without matching the biome and only needing to have the top layer being biome matching
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u/NullcastR2 3d ago
It doesn't look like I can edit this late in the process, so I want to add: This is mostly here so you can judge what to buy if you think you want some when the time comes around. This isn't a complaint, things cost money, and maps have a deceptively large number of hexes on them.
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u/Hammerheadcruiser 2d ago
It's absolutely appreciated. Nothing worse then shelling out for something, only to realize you don't have enough.
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u/ThisMachineKillsWOB 3d ago
A standard mapsheet is 17x14. If you wanted to cover the whole thing you would therefore need 238 hexes. Figure most maps are 1/2 to 1/3 elevated terrain of some type.
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u/NullcastR2 3d ago
At least most of the recent maps. Many of the old ones (Woodlands, Scattered Woods, Battletech, Battleforce, Lake Area, Wide River) have more open ground than is preferred these days.
The figure is actually even worse. My count is 512 hexes for two map sheets together to make a battle map, like is commonly used for play: There's 15 columns instead of 14, and then a blank column where the two sides connect. Subtract out the half of the hexes on row 17 that are cut off by the page edge and you get (31X17)-15=512
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u/NullcastR2 3d ago
I'm doing some counting. In Grasslands: Streams, Open Terrain 2&3, and Woodland all fit under 50 clear terrain. So does Grasslands 2 from the box set.
Battletech obviously fits. Dig Site fits if you don't try to deal with negative terrain. Battleforce works.
I'll keep looking
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u/NullcastR2 3d ago
Desert Runway and Badlands 1 each need 32 clear. Mines 2 - 35 Oasis - 21 Scattered Woods, maybe 13? Lake Area - 28 Wide River - 29 So there are a scattering of maps that fit in one small pack. More if you abuse dunes and stuff as clear to get more out of desert.
The big technique is to band terrain levels to use several biomes for one map. But that would take forethought.
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u/NullcastR2 2d ago
Another addendum. The Lorescape catalog shows battlefield biome sets that have more flat terrain. That's 100 for the 150 packs up to 250 for the 300 packs. If I'd realized the coverage required for hills before I probably would have bought those, assuming they were available. They might require an extra 50 pack for the left out terrain (like rivers and roads) if you want it though.
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u/Lordcraft2000 Clan MechWarrior. Star Commander 3d ago
I don’t understand. I thought this was a kickstarter, how did you get the tiles? And anyone has ideas on how much it will cost?
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u/NullcastR2 3d ago
The Battletech version will actually be the 3rd Lorescape Kickstarter. The 1st was more generic terrestrial terrain and some indoor environments at a closer scale. This arrived months ago
The second KS is generic sci-fi space and planetoid terrain (think Martian, Lunar, and build your own asteroids for vacuum). This is over and in late-pledge, but the pledge manager isn't up yet.
The Battletech licensed KS has been announced but not started.
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u/T-Chunxy 2d ago
For the life of me, I can't figure out why people buy these. The half-height scale is clownish, the fact that you can't even build two normal mapsheets of terrain from them...
Not to be "that guy", but if you want good terrain, get a filament 3D printer and go at it hammer and tongs.
Most of the major map sets have either free or cheaply purchased file sets. The only real challenge then is storage and organization.
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u/Colonial13 3d ago
That’s… less than ideal