Mantic Games and Secret Weapon Miniatures Reach Agreement
February 11, 2015 by stvitusdancern
Mantic Games has announced that they have reached an agreement with Secret Weapon Miniatures to become their exclusive UK and European distributor for their Tablescapes Tile System.
This will save the potential customer a lot of money in shipping costs. The two sets being offered will be the Rolling Hills and the Urban Streets Damaged. With these sets you get 24 1 foot by 1 foot tiles that can be assembled in many combinations, so you can create whatever scenery set you desire.
They do come unpainted which allows you to customize to suit your needs or game genre. This is great news for all gamers across the pond who might have thought about getting this really cool set. They are now availible for pre-order and will ship in the summer around the time of the Kings of War second edition.
Has the costs prevented you from getting one of these sets?
"This is great news for all gamers across the pond who might have thought about getting this really cool set"
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"With these sets you get 24 1 foot by 1 foot tiles that can be assembled in many combinations, so you can create whatever scenery set you desire"
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Do you have to buy 24 of them? I’d love a 3×3 table but don’t want to spend that much to get it and have 15 tiles left over.
Looks like you do http://www.secretweaponminiatures.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=125
The forgotten city and scrapyard sets have 16 designs across 24 tiles and the rest have 8 designs.
So I suppose the diffrent options will give you more customisation the next time you set up….far too pricey for me tho I’ll stick with MDF
I think they are still shipping their kickstarter stock. There was an up cock with the KS order to the factory and SW had to release the retail boxes24 to help cover the costs of the extra manufacturing run.
I think the idea is once all KS are delivered the remaining stock will be sold in smaller pack sizes.
Great stuff but I got a 4×4 set of urban. Eight damaged and eight undamaged. However, there was no set up I could make that doesn’t have four orphan roads up against a non road tile edge. So a not cheap modular set effectively doesnt have a single combination that works whereas you would expect to have a myriad of set ups….due to modularity! LoL. This is hopefully just a KS problem but my advice is if you do get to pick and choose (which wasn’t a KS option) make sure you don’t get lots of crossroads….go more the straight roads, t-junction route!
We’re looking at changing the box contents for future Urban sets to include two more straight roads, and two fewer cross-roads based on feedback like this.
The different options will give you more customization the next time you set up – So you have more then one type of playing field to change up your playing surface every game if you want.
The smallest set we’ll have is a 4×4′ setup — in the interim, splitting a 24 tile set with a friend is a great way to go!
Reminds me of that time that Battlefront become the distributor of Dust
OOOHHH THIS MEANS THAT CRAZY BOX WILL HAVE ONE OF THIS!?!?! 😀 ( lol )
The costs have definitely stopped me. I don’t want/need that many tiles. I want sets of, say 2 or 6. 24? haha. No thanks.
Keep an eye out for 4 tile Display Board, and 16 tile sets in the future.
You will still end up needing a 6×4 table to place it all on?
Nice stuff, butstill at 175 quid definitely in the “unecessary luxury” bracket for me.
Wait for games and gears battle boards. About 100 pounds for 6 2×2 boards. I think they look better too. Check them out.
I’d need them to make a 3×3 board so tiles of that size aren’t suitable.
If they ever ship! Going on 8 months behind on Kickstarter pledge! (Not bitter… much!)
While looking better is certainly a subjective matter of opinion, the current price I’ve seen quoted is either £140 or £150 — which isn’t much of a difference.
But these are also WILDLY different products. The G&G boards are completely flat, with no raised detail, and are much more comparable to the various gaming mats on the market.
They also do not have a problem with no good layouts due to tones of massive 8″ roads on 12″ tiles
You’ve raised this issue before, but it’s not actually an issue, as demonstrated by this handy dandy graphic:
The layouts work out just fine, as the sets are geared for foundation tiles intended to hold terrain.
It will work for low terrain games like warhammer, but not games like infinity. There are already gameing setups for infinity cropping up on the net that have real issues with 8″ roads. I have also watched unboxings that show just how much road you end up with overall and made a copy on paper to see what layouts would look like.
It take one entire order to cross 8” and two to clear it and if you have even 1″ pavement this problem gets bigger. And we all know that is not ideal.
The solution that I have seen is ram vehicals on all the roads and after a certain point this does not look good and certainly not every game. And for the most part is only giving partial cover.
The graphic proves nothing beyond you can fit a landraider and then some on the road and we all know how massive a landraider is. The minimum number of road sections you need to use is 6. And the least intrusive version will run a 8″-12 inch gap of space were buildings cannot -logicly- go across your infinity table + another 2 tiles to go somewhere else.
I keep mentioning it because I do not want tons of people to buy this for high terrain games because they think ‘eye candy’ and are disopinted with the results as my friend did and I almost did. when there is another product that is around the corner that might fit their needs better but they are unaware of. If they know what both are like people can choose for themselves.
I also feel the need to mention games and gears as the coverage of their products has been much less in general on the internet. It was briefly mentioned on beasts of war in the dropzone commander day, but it never had a big plug that I can remember, and they were not shown in much detail. Tablescapes had a banner on here during their KS I think.
As you can see I do not rate the city tiles, but some of SWs other stuff is nice. The rolling hills looks good and I look forward to seeing some painted up.
Maybe when both products are out you should do a comparison video. Maybe add in some mats to.
When I was planning the roads, I put a lot of thought into the scale of the games being played — including Infinity. While your concern is that it takes two turns to cross a road – and it does – my concern was for how big a road SHOULD be. As a basis for Infinity I used some 1:48 cars I have, and one of the great pieces from Antenociti’s Workshop with the idea that they MUST fit two cars side-by-side. Those cars are approx. the size of a Rhino, width wise, and so the road fits perfectly.
So while the Land Raider is shown for scale, my primary concern was for the Rhino and Chimera footprints — using those as the most common examples but, again, with an eye on the AWI cars for Infinity, etc.
Sure, you can have too many cars in a street and it starts to look bad — but if you want some tiny alleys, this can be accomplished between buildings. The roads are realistic, if not “ideal for gaming” in ever scenario.
But a 4×4′ table can be well over 50% covered in terrain before you consider placing anything in the roads… and that works for my games of Infinity. Add in some scatter terrain – and I love those AWI cars but there’s a lot out there, including stuff from SWM – and you’ll only find a few spots on the road that leave you at risk.
In my opinion, that’s a good thing. I think a game needs to have some risk in it to be exciting, and if you can ALWAYS move from cover-to-cover in Infinity it’s a lot less fun. My opinion, obviously.
In the end having 6″ roads – or even 7″ roads – made things too cramped for any game that uses vehicles, or large models in an urban setting, and that’s most of the market. So I went with the larger market share, because I can’t please everyone, and this solution made the most sense from a practical view as well.
I agree that a infinity game needs some more open areas and I play on much more European stile tables. but the problem with the roads is that in all ends up in a straight line every game and the ruins replay ability in my experience.
As for roads smaller than 8″ being unrealistic for 1:48 scale I will disagree with you. I grew up in London and live in Tokyo and there are lots of roads were I live do not allow two cars to pass each other, and on lots more you have to stop and pull in to allow the other to pass, so a city with smaller roads is not out of my realm of imagination. And work better for gaming like you said yourself. Smaller roads also fit better for games set in Europe too, as many roads are narrow in cities like Paris.
Scatter is great for making a game more interesting both game play wise and aesthetically, but what can really go on a road and not look out of place besides vehicles? If you have 4″.5 or 6″ roads you can have benches, bus stops, phone boxes, electrical junction boxes, parking meaters lamp posts all one order away on either side.
The games an gears DZC boards also allow you to make a few sizeable foundation areas that can house a good selection of buildings that are surrounded by roads, giving a variation of open areas that can be avoided or reached in areas of more dence terrain but which allows you to try and pick the best spots to cross.
I also do not agree that 6″ roads are bad for most games with vehicles. It is bad for a land raider yes, but a landraider is silly big. Look at bolt action tanks. They would have no problem on a 6″ road. And in WW2 cities and towns were always more dangerous for tanks because of narrow streets. That is the reality of a tanks limitations. It should add to the challenge and realism. In fact many European countries decided against building mega wide access roads to the heart of cities to due to the speed at which this would allow possible enemy incursion to happen.
This is a reply to qmpsjj to his Feb 14 comment – but for some reason the site won’t let me reply there. I guess you can only nest replies so deep. Anyway….
// As for roads smaller than 8″ being unrealistic for 1:48 scale I will disagree with you. I grew up in London and live in Tokyo and there are lots of roads were I live do not allow two cars to pass each other
As I said, my requirement was that two 1:48 scale vehicles MUST be able to pass side-by-side. Are there roads in the real world where this is not possible? Of course. I also did not say that 8″ roads are not ideal, I simply said they’re not ALWAYS ideal. That’s a big difference. Ultimately I maintain that the 8″ road is the best choice, all around, for every game at 28-32mm scale. I say this, again, specifically because on MOST roads, you can fit two cars, and that’s exactly how wide these roads are.
// …what can really go on a road and not look out of place besides vehicles?
Barricades. Parking pylons. Reinforced walls. Garbage cans. Crates. Really, anything you like that fits the theme. Most of what you list, such as lamp posts and such are not placed in the road, so I don’t see what this has to do with the size of the road.
// The games an gears DZC boards also allow you to make a few sizeable foundation areas…
And so do the Secret Weapon tiles. There are several foundation tiles that are simply raised, flat sections that abut the sidewalk portion of the street tile. This allows you to add at least 50% terrain coverage to the flat surfaces BEFORE you get to the roads.
// Look at bolt action tanks. They would have no problem on a 6″ road…
Yes, but as I said my requirement was that the roads accommodate two vehicles side-by-side, as is most common in modern, planned urban landscapes. There will always be exceptions we can point to. I lived for a time in China, and there are plenty of city streets that can’t accommodate a single, full size car. Of course I’m not going to model that for gaming.
In the end, as I’ve said, I had to make sure that the tiles worked for the greatest possible number of modern, urban settings. That means having 8″ roads. They don’t work for your personal aesthetics, and there are certainly smaller streets in the world, but they do work for gaming.
Your chief complaint seems to be that there isn’t enough flat area for buildings — and that’s simply not true. 50% coverage in a 4×4′ area, before you put anything in the streets, is a good start.
Looking at the G&G urban board now, I’m also not convinced that it has more foundation space — it might, but the layout online makes it hard to tell.
Ultimately, a good game can be played on either — and between the two products I’d say it’s mostly a question of whether you want a raised, 3D environment, or a flat one. The Damaged Urban Tablescapes Tiles includes tiles with 1″ tall rubble that works for cover, but not so much of it you can’t place buildings on the sidewalks and foundation tiles. There’s nothing else like that on the market, except for the resin Forge World tiles… which are, by chance, totally compatible with both of the Urban Tablescapes Tiles sets 🙂
Ive got the Games n gears boards on order from their KS (after seeing them on a Mantic open day) so I would only think about these as an optional extra tbh. £175 is far too expensive though imho! As others have stated, £100 seems the high side of a fair price in my eyes. I think Secret Weapon has always priced things for a low turnover of products and a high profit margin, which seems odd if they are coupled with Mantic that tries to make gaming more affordable. Unless Secret weapon are paying Mantic for the privilege to advertise alongside them ofc. 🙂
Forgot to add: there doesnt appear to be anything holding the boards together, unlike the GnG ones that have a clip function. With so many little boards, it could get really messy without anything stabilising them…
There’s a wee cross shaped clip goes into the corner, its down under “innovations” on the store pages.
Ahh, yeah I saw it on their own page ‘proprietary compression clips’. I wonder if I can fit that into a sentance today whilst talking about non gamer stuff. 😛
Hmm we’re back to the balance triangle again: good-cheap-quick, this one is for if you don’t have time to attack slabs of pink foam with a box cutter.
In a vacuum it seems expensive, but compare it to the alternatives: use a flat table, spend hours gluing sand to foam, or pay the same price for other companies versions of the same thing (or more if you want GW’s city boards).
Selling them in a 24 pack is a bit mean though, I can see a lot of them selling in singles or 4s for army displays. might even be worth someone’s while breaking the packs up to resell on ebay.
£140rrp from Games and gears.
Admittedly, im getting mine via KS in order to make it cost effective though as they were a lot cheaper.
http://www.gamesandgears.co.uk/dropzonecommandercityscap.aspx#sthash.x4HQ3ZLA.zuFkLZsG.dpbs
I also like games and gears for the overhang ability of their boards. Saves me buying a 4×4 table as I can now use my 4×3 dining table.
The Tablescapes Tiles can cope with overhangs of as much as 6″ on either side of the table — allowing you to play a 4×6′ game on a 3′ wide dining table — but I wouldn’t recommend it. The size of the tile won’t make as much of a difference as the quality of the clips holding them together.
I’ve played many games on my 3′ wide dining table, using the Tablescapes Tiles with an overhang. We just don’t set up our armies along the long edge.
Damn. They had a real opportunity to snatch up a good market here, but at £175 these are prohibitively expensive – they’re no better (price-wise, at least) than the Games Workshop Realm of Battle boards. No sale for me.
Yes they’re nice – but at that price people are always going to wonder whether they’ve that much value given the optionality of such scenery and the alternatives out there.
To many joins, to much chance of damaging the paint or knocking the flock off when assembling, too much time to decorate it all, to expensive, I really can’t see a plus side to these.
I would want to see these in the flesh first
Having seen and played on these boards, I can say they are really nice. They pack up very compact, they are very sturdy when clipped together. They also have border frames to make display boards. We used then with a GW board, the flats, and they were pretty close match, close enough for gaming. The price is somewhat higher now than the original plan, but they were very well priced as a kickstarter, but that is when comparing to regional GW prices, which are not just based on exchange rates. So may not seem as well priced in the UK as in Canada or the US, where GW prices are significantly higher.
There’s one problem I have with this whole thing though. They have not yet fulfilled their kickstarter shipments to ROW, so why is it already going to retail. My buddy backed this and he’s still patiently waiting for his. With this new news I think his patience will run out soon.
This isn’t going to retail today. This is something we’ve announced in advance of the launch — and both companies are aiming for a summer release, as outlined in the article.
It is true that we are still fulfilling the last of our Kickstarter backers — but the vast majority, including everyone in the EU/UK/AUS/NZ regions, have received their product. There are a few exceptions, of course, but there always are.
Prices will also vary by region, of course, as a reflection of local import costs, conversion rates, etc. The sad reality of international business. Alas.