Maps by Rÿchean

[Hex_Enduction_Hour]

Crash and Burn looks excellent, but it's hard to tell the heights from the image angle. Does the road have the highest point or those stone plateaus?

Fire Starter! Ah, man, that's brutal! What a way to start a battle - I love it.
I keep thinking which figures I'd start on the lava fields and who would I move off first?!?! AAH!
The center area with all the tree coverage is sweet.
Very nice and creative map design!

[Rÿchean]

Crash and Burn is only 3 levels high. Grass hills on the edge and rock hills by water are equal height to the road as well as some of the rock hexes in the middle area.

[Nadi]

Great maps, Rÿchean! You definitely have a knack for terrific map building.

[Rÿchean]

Originally Posted by Velenne

What's your process? Does it start as a finished product in your mind?

It depends. Sometimes I begin with the end in mind. Sometimes it develops as I go.

Originally Posted by Velenne

Do you have a few terrain features you want to include and just build out from there? Do you just pick some sets and throw them together, adjusting on the fly?

Usually I pick sets and work them into something I like. There are times where a terrain feature inspires.

Sometimes I create in VS a bit first to get some ideas. Sometimes I work with the physical terrain first.

For Crash and Burn, I started with the required sets and started tweaking from there. As I worked, I decided on things I wanted on the map and the layout. I came to wanting a mucked up road with lava being low ground middle. I tweaked it from there.

The name came to me from the way the maps plays. The road does funnel the armies at one another with the glyphs being housed on the lava field.

I am not sure how I feel about he map. I worked on it quite a bit and felt it was unique enough that I didn't want my effort to go to waste so I documented it.

The Pic is a bad angle; my apologies.

[UranusPChicago]

If I may offer some constructive criticism...

Crash & Burn
I see that you moved the "M" of the road off center to compensate the better view afforded the Army on the right when attacking with range from the road, but I am not sure that it completely takes care of the job. It would be a lot easier if WOTC came out with additional ruins that were the mirror opposite of the current ones.

The short side of the smaller ruin does not provide much cover at all to someone attacking with range from the right "hump" of the "M".

Replacing the rock 3-hex behind the smaller ruin with 2-hex and flipping the ruin around might help a little.

Fire Starter
Chaotic genius! Many choices, many paths, lots of coverage, first round death, oh my!

[Rÿchean]

Thanks UPC. I appreciate your thoughts. I consider it an honor.

If Crash and Burn garnishes enough attention, I will look into the modifications you recommended.

Thanks everyone!

[Shades fan]

I wanted to remark about how much fun Fire Starter was to play on. I got a chance to play on it, and must say I loved it, keep them coming!

[Shades fan]

I saw the newest version of Meatgrinder in the Download section, it looks great, I can't wait to playtest it!

[stubobj]

Links to your maps don't seem to be working for me.

[Rÿchean]

They are mostly broke. I apologize. I haven't taken the time to update the pics and links since the site conversion back in the spring.

It's on my list of things to do. Thanks for stopping by. You can get a look at most of maps and some creations of some others by looking at this DL search:

http://www.heroscapers.com/community/member.php?u=48

You will need to scroll down for the map listings.

[Rÿchean]

I finally got around to updating my links and images in the first post. I forgot I had so many maps. Some of them haven’t even been uploaded since the site upgrade.

Cinderpoint, FaultLine, and Rock Creek Way are still broke, but I will have those links and images corrected soon.

[Cleon]

Thanks for updating, Rÿchean, I forgot how many excellent tournament maps you have. I especially like Island Conflict and Jungle Swamp Road.

Island Conflict - I really like this one for a few reasons. I played it at GenCon 07', actually my first match there (which was also my first tournament with you guys) was on it so it was pretty special. I forgot the name, and that you made it. I also like it because it's a well built map that qualifies for tournaments that only uses 1 RotV master set. I find this needable for the BoV, to have another choice for 1 RotV master set maps.

Jungle Swamp Road - My favorite map when I was a lot younger and only played on hasbro maps, was Wolf Swamp Road. Too bad Wolf Swamp Road is a little too unfair to qualify for tight tournaments. This resembles it in a more tournament playable form, and uses the SotM master set along with Ticalla Jungle that also needs more of in the BoV. And as Revdyer said once, it's very interesting to use the RttFF road along with Ticalla Jungle trees rather than the RttFF trees.

So I plan on nominating these 2 maps in the BoV as soon as I find an appropriate "opening" period where the judges aren't overwhelmed with maps, for those previous listed reasons.