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Sector Imperialis board and GW madness


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Greetings,

 

at my club we have purchased a Realm of Battle - Sector Imperialis gaming board. Looks nice etc. etc.

 

 

HOWEVER, we were more than disappointed to find out that the table comes with no plastic connectors for the 6 boards.

 

 

The reason - as far as I can understand - is that the Sector Imperialis is considered by GW a sort of 'expansion' of the earlier Realm of Battle (fantasy) gaming board, which, on the other hand, comes with plenty of spare plastic connectors - ah, the irony.

 

 

Now, apart from cursing GW's idiocy for not including a 10 pence-worth of connectors with a board priced that high, I honestly do not know what to do, since we do not have a Realm of Battle board, and certainly we are not intentioned to buy any.

 

 

I am sure other have already ranted about this issue - can anybody provide suggestion? I can't find any spare connectors for sale on ebay or elsewhere. Perhaps anyone found other viable solutions to connect the boards? Or is there a Realm of Battle owner who wishes to sell his spare connectors?

 

 

Sorry, but his one really led me into thinking that GW is a bunch of retards, if I had any doubt left.

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Have you considered using magnets? You could carefully mark each board with spaces on all sides (allowing the potential for different configurations), drill a small space, then mount magnets flush with the sides. Use magnets just large enough to hold the boards together during game play.

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If you install magnets you’re limiting the possible alignments of the tiles: you can’t fit them so that you always have two opposite poles facing each other.

 

I looked at GW’s site just now trying to find pictures of how the boards fit together, but no luck. However, Google seems to have come to the rescue. Is it these clips you mean?

 

http://roll2dice.com/gfx/theothertalon/CitadelGamingTable07.jpg

 

I’m trying to think of something that would work in its place … if you have plastic tube that will fit under the board, you can probably cut a slit in it lengthwise and slip it over the edges to clamp the tiles together. Other than that I don’t have any real ideas :sad.:

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Greetings,

 

at my club we have purchased a Realm of Battle - Sector Imperialis gaming board. Looks nice etc. etc.

 

 

HOWEVER, we were more than disappointed to find out that the table comes with no plastic connectors for the 6 boards.

 

 

The reason - as far as I can understand - is that the Sector Imperialis is considered by GW a sort of 'expansion' of the earlier Realm of Battle (fantasy) gaming board, which, on the other hand, comes with plenty of spare plastic connectors - ah, the irony.

 

 

Now, apart from cursing GW's idiocy for not including a 10 pence-worth of connectors with a board priced that high, I honestly do not know what to do, since we do not have a Realm of Battle board, and certainly we are not intentioned to buy any.

 

 

I am sure other have already ranted about this issue - can anybody provide suggestion? I can't find any spare connectors for sale on ebay or elsewhere. Perhaps anyone found other viable solutions to connect the boards? Or is there a Realm of Battle owner who wishes to sell his spare connectors?

 

 

Sorry, but his one really led me into thinking that GW is a bunch of retards, if I had any doubt left.

 

 

Have you contacted GW and explained this and asked for a few connectors?

 

If so and they didn't, shame on them.

If not and you come here maligning a company without asking them about it first, shame on you.

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If the tiles are square and single sided then you won't limit the possible arrangements by proper magnetization, just figure out what the smallest length of board edge match up possible and put two magnets for each section like this
|             |
|N Edge S|
|S    1   N|

|N Edge S|
|S    2   N|

|             |

Edited by Teetengee
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If you install magnets you’re limiting the possible alignments of the tiles: you can’t fit them so that you always have two opposite poles facing each other.

The alternative (if you still want to use a magnet option) is to use a combination of metal/magnets, with the "touch points" arranged in such a way that you can have a variety of board setups magnet to metal and metal to magnet. This requires buying small metal plates/pieces in addition to the magnets, but such pieces could be metal stripes or even ferrous washers readily available in DIY stores. You could go with a simple arrangement, allowing a basic gridded arrangement of tiles. Alternately, you could add additional touch points that would allow you to offset rows (this is a bit more work-intensive on the front end). The key is in getting everything flush (and if the resin tile sides are thin enough and the magnets powerful enough, you might only have to glue everything inside the tiles so that the magnetic field attracts the metal through two layers of resin).

gallery_26_548_22539.jpg

gallery_26_548_37034.jpg

gallery_26_548_25389.jpg

Admittedly, such a magnetization process is a bit work-intensive on the front end. Procuring suitable clips is much easier. But magnetizing is sexy. :wink:

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From what I hear it's pretty cheap these days to get some lasered mdf bases, even with custom templates. The connectors are basically just a cross with a circle on each end. If you had the measurements you could probably whip up a vector file and have that lasered.

They would not snap into the board, but at least prevent people from pulling the board apart.

 

Another popular solution for modular tables are frames. You basically just need some wooden boards the right length that are held together with latches.

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There’s an idea: you wouldn’t need a frame, just some square blocks of wood would be enough. Get a sheet of plywood at least as large as the assembled board, and cut 24 wood squares that will fit in the corners of the plastic tiles. Then all you need to do is glue (and preferably screw) the squares to the plywood so that the tiles will fit over them. It’s a bit of work and requires fairly careful alignment, but it will prevent the tiles from moving at all, and you’ll also never have any broken clips. On the downside, it’s more expense and you’ve got a big board you’ll need to store.
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Thanks for all the suggestions. I thought about magnetizing, but honestly it is rather depressing to spend additional time to do it. My fault for trusting GW and giving it for granted that they would sell ready-to-use board -__-

 

Clips would need to be specifically made, to prevent them from making the bottom of the board uneven.

 

And no, I really feel no shame at all for ranting GW for such an *obviously* retarded, insulting policy. I will certainly write them, but I feel like I already know their answer. I might post it here though, just for fun.

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Honestly you arent missing out on much. The clips on the boards are absolutely woeful, magnets or board like has been suggests is FAR better.

 

The magnet solution doesnt even even require much extra work, the bottom of the plastic tiles (along the edges) have a number of square hollows which would suit square magnets perfectly, no drilling needed. Just make sure you get the polarity right and it will take 15-20 minutes tops to magentise the entire set of tiles.

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  • 2 weeks later...
The thing with the Black pinch-style clips suggested, is that the leaver arms can easily be removed once the clip is in place. You just pinch them and they pop in-and-out for clamping and removal. With the arms removed they are reasinably low profile. Those style of clip are stong and come in a variety of sizes, they could be the most striaght forward and least expensive to at least try.
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You can fold the arms upward when the clip is in place. If there’s not enough room for them to fold all the way (as is likely) you could probably let the weight of the board and the sturdiness of the table underneath push them out of the way. Still, depending on the actual dimensions of the ribs they need to go around, I have a feeling it may be difficult to find clamps that are both small enough to fit and strong enough to hold the board together.
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