The Egyptian desert is a great locale for Heroclix battles. Many characters--such as Captain Marvel (oops, sorry, I mean, "Shazam"), Black Adam, Isis, Dr Fate, Metamorpho--have Egyptian origins or connections. And many heroes with no organic links to the Children of the Nile still have had aegyptian advenures, such as Wonder Woman versus the violent Bana-Mighdall, Batman versus mad King Tut, and Josh Bernstein versus megalomaniacal Zahi Hawass.
So here's a Heroclix map of the Egyptian desert! There's a dig site, a campsite, a quonset hut, some desert vehicles, and a little pyramid. They provide hindering terrain, some elevated (well, "negatively elevated") terrain, some interior terrain, and some blocking terrain. Just a little bit of everything.
This isn't the most elaborate or beautiful Heroclix map, but it does have one usual characteristic that I've been experimenting with: it's modular.
As you can see above, you can split the map into six equal segments without intersecting any objects or terrain features. As a result you can cut the map into those segments, then rotate and rearrange them in any way you wish to form a valid Heroclix map. So, instead of ONE map, you get...let's see, um.... 134,596? Something like that. I think. A lot, anyway. Much more than one.
There are certainly flaws with the concept. Even though the segments are as different from one another as I could make them given the setting, I'm not sure how much rotating or swapping the segments would actually change the gameplay. Also, while none of the objects are split by the segment cuts, the underlying sand pattern IS, and that's going to be noticeable when you shuffle the segments.
Still it seemed like enough of a novelty to want to share and to see whether any other such modular maps would be of interest to other players.
11 comments:
Very nice.
Are there any plans to expand it to include the tomb or pyramid interior? It ceratinly has the potential (much like your Sword of Atom map).
Not this one, but I have been thinking of doing something like that map. Such as, the left half of the map would be an outdoor scene with some sort of building in the middle, then the right half would be the interior of that building. It would be change of scale, just not as dramatic as the Sword of the Atom map.
Such a design would reflect the fact that you can't move around as quickly inside a complex building as quickly as you can in an open outside area where you can build up some running speed.
No Sphinx? I like sphinxes. (Sphinxi?)
Finding an overhead view of the Sphinx is... harder than you'd think.
I'm looking for the old 2x2 maps, since I only play multi-player games - any idea where I can find some? (we have all the official existing ones)
Hm. K, do you mean the big 3"x3" maps...? I have designed a few of those...
"Finding an overhead view of the Sphinx is... harder than you'd think."
No doubt. Turns out, though, my daughter is a budding Egyptologist, and I happen to have a startling amount of sphinxes laying around the house. See if one of these might help you with future maps.
http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd31/longba2/Sphinx2.jpg
http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd31/longba2/Sphinx1.jpg
I feel certain your Photoshop skills are up to the challenge, but I can try to take better shots if you're interested.
I've just returned to both comics and clix after a long hiatus, how would I go about purchasing one of your awesome maps?
I've just returned to both comics and clix after a long hiatus, how would I go about purchasing one of your awesome maps?
I've just returned to both comics and clix after a long hiatus, how would I go about purchasing one of your awesome maps?
If you give me your email address, I would be happy to mail you the file; with that you could get the printed out on-line at PosterBrain.
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