Wednesday, June 3, 2020

Miniature Musings - Tabletop Simulator

I haven't played any more solo games, and my painting progress has slowed a bit so that I don't have enough to justify a painting post. 

I have, however, been fooling around on Tabletop Simulator. 

While the restrictions around the pandemic have been loosening (to where we'll be able to game in stores again mid-June, it looks like) plenty of people have had the time and inclination to hone their skills and develop more modules. 

For those of you who aren't aware of Tabletop Simulator, it's basically a physics engine designed around board games. It doesn't have any actual assets beyond the basics like Chess or Checkers, but it does allow users to import files of their own. These can be self-designed playing pieces, high-res pictures, or lines of code that actually follow the rules of the game. However, most of the time it's on the players to know the rules. 


As an example, this is a fantastic module for To The Strongest that features pre-made armies themed around 1066 England.


Each army has appropriate units, army lists, markers, tokens, and card decks to play with.


As you can see, I set the game up to look like a turn is being played. Thanks to TtS! grid-based movement, it's very easy to move troops around the field. There's also ten different pre-made terrain setups for the map.


There are plenty of modules for other games as well. This is a setup for the first scenario from Rangers of Shadow Deep.


There's a DBA 3.0 (and a 2.2) module.


There's even a X-Wing: Heroes of the Aturi Cluster module! It's a little busted at the moment since Tabletop Simulator updated, but I'll keep an eye on it for when it's hopefully fixed.

You can get Tabletop Simulator for $20 on Steam. There's officially licensed board games that you can pay for, but a lot of the modules are available for free.

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