Infinity Neon Lotus Scenery Pack

With Rogue Stars coming out in December my thoughts have part wandered towards Sci-fi gaming. For the game I have enough painted figures to put together a force or two, but terrain was slightly different. I wanted a change from the Industrial\Necromunda style and was presuming that the clean Infinity look was where I'd bee heading until someone on the Rogue Stars Facebook page shared the Infinity Neon Lotus Scenery Pack. For me this tied into the oriental feel that Blade Runner cultured and I knew it was a must buy. Especially as it costs around £8. And with Christmas conveniently approaching, well you can guess the rest!

Now the mince pies and animated films have faded away for another year I thought I'd get the kit constructed and show you how it looks in real life.

First off a warning. Although the kits require no glue and will deconstruct to flat storage again I didn't want the hassle of building them every time (as well as putting the strain on some of the tabs), so decided to use glue to secure the some folded parts down. DO NOT DO THIS! The buildings have been cleverly designed with the understanding that folded card will try to straighten out, and so if you use glue the result will be gappy (see the roof picture below). Having said that I did use glue for the side parts of the walkways with good effect - just don't do it for the buildings. Fortunately I only made this mistake for the first large building of 4 and it isn't disastrous.

OK, lets state get the obvious out the way, its quite boxy. However the textures and the walkways do distract from this effect a bit. The pictures of the other styled sets in this range look a lot more-so (especially as this seems to be the only set with walkways). The textures are solid and clear and the card is of a substantial thickness that the structures don't sag under the weight of a fully occupied roof space. The buildings all have at least one ladder graphic on them to provide a defined climbing point which I was glad to see.

As can be seen from the official picture at the top of the post, the kit comes with a game mat (roughly A1 sized), but it wasn't really to my taste so I won't be using it. The reverse side is a nice artwork poster, so that may adorn a blank spot on a wall.

There is enough here to half fill a 3'x3' table, I'd say, as they look better close together as a "sector". The photo above shows some of the ikubes I have, the brighter coloured ones fit right in the the Neon Lotus theme (available for free download from the highly recommended Toposolitario ). For the budget I think this is a great set, offering a different look from the usual Industrial or clean sci-fi looks. A bit of extra furnishing will go a long way to breaking up the cardboard box feel, but even on it's own it will be great fun when the dice start rolling.