Dust Tactics modular building 80% off @FFG holiday sale 2014

[Just_a_Bill]

I haven't posted in months, but thought some other terrain customizers might like to know that Fantasy Flight Games is clearancing a bunch of Dust Tactics stuff at up to 80% off list prices. (The 2014 holiday sale apparently ends tomorrow, Monday 1 December.) Of particular interest is their Operation Cerberus expansion set, bargain-priced at $9 each instead of $45. You'll have to pay shipping (I couldn't find any free-shipping promotion for big orders), but even so, it seems like a steal to me.

Looking at the box and reading the description in FFG's online store, one might think all you get here is rules, cardboard tokens, and two goofy-looking unpainted figures. However, the hidden treasure in this expansion is a big, plastic, brownstone-style building comprising 61 modular parts:



I should note that I haven't actually laid hands on this item yet. Before ordering my two sets today, I googled around to try to get an idea of size and fit, and found this guy doing some frankengaming with 'Scape terrain and Dust buildings. In the pictures below it looks to me like he used basically one copy of Operation Cerberus, split into a double-story building and a single-story building. (I can't be certain about that, since the shorter building has a convex rather than concave rear corner. That might have required a part or two from another set.)



Seems like some pretty decent square footage for nine bucks!

Most of the images I could find show the same Utah-shaped building footprint, but other configurations are possible. Here are some examples I googled (some of these use more than one set, obviously):



I understand that the possible arrangements are not quite as flexible as one might hope: the tongue-and-groove design means that you can't just pick any two parts and expect that they will be keyed to each other. One reviewer noted that you cannot, for example, put the doorway section right next to a corner piece, because they are both female; you need one of the male wall sections in between, like the one shown below at left. The next image after that shows an upper story composed of all female pieces.



There's a Youtube video that can give you an idea of how they slide together (though I wince when seeing how roughly the guy rips them apart).

YouTube

Naturally, these pieces just scream to be painted, distressed, and embellished:



Operation Cerberus comes with two doorway pieces, so if you want to make more than two buildings out of a single set, you can either have the figures climb through the windows (which is actually a rule in Dust: all ground-floor windows apparently count as doors) or just leave out a section, as was done in the above picture of the little house with the corrugated pitched roof.



Note that a different Dust Tactics expansion set called Warzone Tenement is also clearance priced at $9 (as of this writing). That set is actually what I stumbled onto first, and I almost bought it before I did more research. The WT box clearly does a better job of looking like what it contains, but it has fewer parts for your same clearance-dollars. Basically, it's the same footprint but only two stories tall, and I think it has only one door piece. So don't waste your money on the Tenement set unless FFG has run out of Cerberus by the time you place an order (in which case, WT is probably still a steal at $9). [If the Tenement is also gone and you're desperate, it looks like Operation Sverograd has a one-story building, but I haven't investigated the specific parts.]

Here are a couple more videos:

YouTube

(beauty shots of painted building @ 0:30, 0:44, 1:40)

YouTube

(close-up detail @ 7:55)

Again, I think this holiday sale is ending imminently. I'm sorry I didn't know about this sooner.

[Gurei-Ornery]

I picked up 7 of them, mainly because I play Dust, but I did have the same thought that they might make good Heroscape buildings.

EDIT: BTW, shipping is $15-20 bucks, so plan on buying a few to make it worth it.

[caps]

Hmm. Those look cool. Very tempting.

[TREX]

This stuff still on sell. right now. any links to the site.