Map 17 of 26: Pizza-Loving, Martial Artist Sewer

The goal is twenty six maps in fifty weeks. To be on schedule, Map 17, this map, needed to be posted by September 24th. I'm doing a happy dance as for the first time in months, I'm on schedule.

What can I say... this map was begging to be made. Everybody wants a certain select four reptilian ninjas. The "Man" has the license already. I have the cash in my wallet to give to the "Man" for them. Is the "Man" man enough to step up to the plate and take my money?

Sure, some of you are on the wheaty side and want comic based miniatures while the others are on the frosted side and want cartoon based miniatures. You can say I'm not being a purist with this map, but come on people, they're just pillows.

Heck, I just realized I was making a shredded wheat analogy up there and the major villain of these guys is called... hey now, that's crazy and completely unplanned.

Me personally, I'm an Italian guy and I'm playing into a stereotype, but I like pizza. The map needed it.

All in all, a fun map to make and I can't wait to play on it.

Thank you for reading and the next map I post will pay homage to my favorite villain.

Map 16 of 26: Paradise City

I will apologize in advance for the cornball Guns N Roses joke that is about to happen. Last Monday I posted the toughest working environment in the cosmos to commemorate Labor Day. This week I take you up to Paradise City where the grass is green and the gaming is pretty.

Yeah, I couldn't resist that.

It's tough to visually represent a floating city without showing the ground below. Top down maps utilizing a square grid system have some inherent issues with a lot of locations I want to represent. Those typical bubble cities, like Atlantis or Gorilla City are difficult to pull off. Get to close to the city interior and you don't get to see the city boundaries which is where the magic happens. The same thing applies to your floating cities. Without seeing the transition from air to ground, you just can't tell its above the earth.

This leads to game mechanic issues. How do you represent an area where clearly no non-flier can exist? I've opted for the easy way out with the poor man's fix... the orange terrain line.


In the last post I mentioned my hatred of blocking terrain and yet here I'm showcasing it. The five sculptural monuments are blocking terrain. I jumped between the idea of either making them hindering or blocking but in the end like the tight spaces they create.


This map has a lot of different terrain elements crammed in a very tight space. I can't wait to print this bad bear and try it out. In the meantime, send me your thoughts on what the special rulings should be for the orange area.
Thanks for reading and I'll see you guys again in the next few days.

Map 15 of 26: Doomtown

Oh no, not Latveria. We have a passable Latveria map already.

One of my biggest pet peeves is that lack of non-terrestrial maps that have been put out. Comic Books have spanned the galaxy and stretched from the beginning of creation to the end of time. Yet somehow a lot of the maps produced these days tend to follow the town, park, office, rinse and repeat pattern. I've even annoyed myself with my own generic town maps.

I started reading comics in the 70's and as a kid I was always blown away by Jack Kirby's artwork. You cannot pick up one of his books and not immediately recognize his particular style. This map has been on the burners for a while. And seeing how today is Labor Day, I felt it was time to finally finish the map the signifies probably the worst place in the galaxy to work.

This map has gone thru a few developmental stages over the years. However what kept me from releasing this image was that I was never comfortable with the realism one can get on a map and how that realism blended with some natural Kirby-esque imagery I wanted to use. So today I hunkered down and practiced my Kirby dots.


As I flip thru those old comic books, I love how Kirby would dot up everything and add these bizarre geometric lines and circles. Hopefully I've captured that feel here. As far as the rules go from the fire pits, I was torn. I hate blocking terrain as I have never been a fan of any feature stopping Superman or Thor. So I decided to mark them as Special. As the player, you can determine if they're blocking, have special rules or, heck, maybe they're just hindering.

I was particularly happy with the slave wheels as well as they were cobbled together from numerous sources including an item from the original Dundjinni set.

And this is a map that lines up nicely with itself! Here you can see nine of them put together in three rows of three.

Next map will be around the corner in a few days. We saw Doom town, so next I'll be showing off Paradise City. After that, the next map may be having you say, "Kowabunga, dude!".

As always. Thanks for reading.