Re: (TFT) Myth III boardgame

[Nocstar <shepherd93@insightbb.com>]

Miniatures are the only way our group ever plays. We have all sorts of 
terrain from trees to Castles (yes that's with a capital c). I use a hex 
map and 3-d dungeon walls made from card stock. There are all sorts of 
inexpensive terrain available that you can print out and assemble. When we 
set up a village with buildings, streets and citizens, it really adds to 
the game. We have accumulated quite a few miniatures over the years so we 
are usually able to provide something that fits the need or comes close. We 
did away with the mega-hex and substituted the numerical equivalents 
instead, e.g. a megahex freeze centers on the target hex and consists of a 
seven hex area. Line of sight is not too troublesome; we still use the 
center of hex to center of hex rule and rule in favor of the target if the 
call is too close. I wouldn't play any other way if given a choice.

In one game that comes to mind, the group was traveling through a swamp 
looking for a lost temple. The swamp was rumored to be infested with 
reptilemen. We used a two large vinyl hex maps end to end. We taped this 
down on the edges using drafting tape (peels up easy). We then covered the 
whole map with green cellophane and taped it down. As the GM I set up the 
landscape before the game started. It consisted of trees obtained from 
model train hobby stores with lichen hanging from the limbs and clumps of 
lichen dotted around the board for bushes. A few well chosen twigs from the 
back yard made perfect rotting logs. Finally, the whole battleground was 
covered with pulled and fluffed cotton to create a wispy fog over the area. 
It was actually much easier to do than it is to write about and did not 
take any real time at all.

The effect on the game was fantastic. There was no real trail to follow, so 
the group had to trail blaze. Random die rolls created bogs and quicksand. 
Random reptilemen actually seemed to appear out of the mist to ambush the 
group at intervals. And since I was secretly rolling to see if they got 
lost you could sense their relief when they finally reached the temple. The 
temple was a weird piece of cardboard packing material that came attached 
to the legs of a piece of furniture. With a little bit oh highlighting 
paint, it looked remarkably like some Aztec ruin (as far as we knew anyway 
;-) ). It was pyramidal with four step-like levels. It was one of  our 
better sessions. The weather was hot and humid and we had no air 
conditioning. A jungle sound effect tape was playing softly in the 
background. We started playing at 8 AM and before we realized it, it was 
dark. That was a great day of epic challenges overcome. And the scenery 
held up with out a problem. Well..... until my brother spilled the beer.
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