Shark Mounted Lasers’ City Tiles – Abused for Science!

The city board.

Admit it, you’ve always wanted one. You’ve seen those awesome pictures online. You’ve dreamed about unveiling it to your buddies and seeing the looks of shock and amazement on their faces. The utterly amazing games you could play on that magnificent city table. Maybe you’ve even started planning one.

But where do you start? Sure you can improvise buildings with small cardboard boxes and planters with bits of flock and aquarium plants. But cities have roads, sidewalks, discrete placement of buildings… how are you going to do that?

Once again, Shark Mounted Lasers has you covered.

A lot of attention has been given to vinyl and rubber backed play mats lately but I believe SML has something unique with their City Street Tiles. Today we are going to look at how these tiles are constructed, their durability in a number of situations, and finally their aesthetics and variability.

Construction

First off let’s take a look at how these are built. Each tile is made up of two layers of 1/16 inch particle board. The two layers are used to give the tile depth between street and sidewalk levels. It also  adds heft to what could be a flimsy feeling product making them feel sturdy and durable.

The two layers come as separate pieces so a bit of assembly is required. I assembled this tile by first abrading each faying surface with some 240 grit sandpaper to rough them up then lightly then lightly scoring them with a box cutter. Then I used Elmers Glue-All (PVA) that was slightly thinned with water on one of the corners. For the other corner I used a un-thinned PVA glue but spread it thinly with a brush. I then placed a few heavy text books on top while things dried over night.

The results between the two gluing methods are nearly identical. Both hold equally well, but there is a small gap in the corner where un-thinned glue was used. It’s barely noticeable, even when looking for it. If you’re a perfectionist you can safely water down the glue without worrying about sacrificing bond strength.

Durability

I said the tiles FELT durable didn’t I? Well lets find out if they ARE durable!

Damage Resistance

If your opponent is prone to rage flipping the table or you’re a bit clumsy (like me) chances are this tile is going to get dropped… So let’s drop it! For this test I released the tile from a height of five feet… with a corner facing down… onto a bare concrete floor. In terms of dropping this is about the worst case scenario and is likely to cause maximum damage.

On impact the tile flexed a surprising amount. But after recovering it and examining it the only damage I could find was a slightly bent corner where it impacted. The two plies bonded together give this tile an amazing toughness. I even found I could massage the corner back to near pristine condition with just my fingers.

Moisture Resistance

It wouldn’t be a game with out a drink in your hand!… and it wouldn’t be a game if said drink didn’t get spilled at some point! So once more in the name of science I abused this poor tile by subjecting it to hot and cold spill tests.

Cold

I spilled cold water from the fridge onto the tile and let it sit for 20 seconds. The cold water just beaded up on the surface and I was able to simply pour it off the side with only a slight wet mark that dried within a few minutes. The end result was no noticeable impact.

Hot

This went a bit differently than the cold water test. This time I took some near boiling water and splashed it on the tile. Almost instantly the hot water was absorbed into the tile and everywhere the water touched the tile swelled and began showing signs of raised fibers. I then let my daughter play with her toys on it to see if this was merely cosmetic. But the tile held up and remained durable. As the water dried the swelling went down, although there are still signs of where the spill was.

Warping Resistance

Since there is a good chance these could be left in a hot car or a cold garage let’s see how susceptible this sucker is to warping in hot or cold weather! First, to simulate a hot car I placed the tile in the oven, set it to 160 deg F and let it bake for 8 hours.

This was the lowest I could set my oven. I got the oven up to temperature and let the tile “bake” for 6 hours. This was to represent leaving the tiles in the trunk of your car on a hot summer day. By the end of this test the tile was hot to the touch, but otherwise should no signs of warping or burning.

Second, let’s see how it holds up to being in a cold garage. I’ve already left it in my garage for a few days, but it’s been a mild autumn here in Utah. So let’s stick it in the freezer! For this test I left it in the freezer, laying flat for approximately a day.

After pulling the tile from it’s icey confinement I’m happy to report there was no damage induced. I even flexed it some to see if I could get the glue to snap, but everything held tight!

I’ve dropped it, spilled it, baked it, and frozen it, all in the name of science and still this little guy has hung in there and is still in near perfect condition! I can easily say that if you pick up a set of these tiles damaging and/or warping them isn’t something you need to be worried about! Although I would recommend you treat the wood to help protect them.

Aesthetics

Let me just go right out and say, these tiles are sexy. They are loaded with detail, they have different levels, and they are scaled perfectly for a 28mm table top game. Putting my minis down on the board gave me a giddy thrill since they looked like they were truly apart of the scenery, not just standing on top of a picture!

Thanks to  the miracle of the modern computer controlled laser cutter, everything fits together perfectly and multiple tiles line up very precisely. If I had a single request, it would be some sort of system to allow tiles to interlock so things couldn’t accidently shift mid game.

While the style is certainly futuristic, there’s nothing outlandish about any of the laser etched designs. No vast fields of hexagons, no strange symbols – in fact you could use this for any sci-fi or modern era themed game and it would still work perfectly without advertising it was designed with Infinity in mind.

While I was busy destroying my tile I gave another to a friend to see what he could do with it. Using just some cheap craft paint, a sponge, and some water colors he knocked this out in a single after noon! With just minimum time and effort you can turn these tiles into some amazing terrain pieces. -Seriously I could look at these pictures all day long.

Variability

SML has really pulled out the stops here. Not only do you have the usually straight, left/right turn, and T-sections, but they’ve come up with variants to each to keep things looking different. They also have a number of non-street sections so you have places to position extra large buildings, planters and other bits of scatter. With a modest set of these tiles you can build a vast array of different city blocks that can be reconfigured for a new game experience each time! If your city table looks like anyone else’s or even your last game, it’s no one’s fault but your own.

In Summary

We assembled a tile using several methods and found it was pretty simple and accepting of different techniques. We put it through hell so you wouldn’t have to. Finally, we painted one up so you could see how beautiful they truly are. Considering how well they stood up to abuse and how easy it is to make them look amazing, I can safely recommend these to everyone who is looking to get a jump on a city board of their very own!

A few random musings for the TLDR crowd:

– Keep you tea and coffees away from these things.

– Even my unsupervised 3 year old couldn’t hurt one.

– The details are nice without being too far out there.

-There are tons of options for available and they come in packs too.

– I’m ready to build a city board of my own using these as the base for it.

If you have any experience with these tile, please share it in the scenery section of the forums. If you want to find out more about Shark Mounted Laser you can visit their spot on the forums or visit their website.