There is an idea in an old (video) game design manual I read from the late 90’s, that the User Interface was the single most important part of the game. Not because good UI could make a game, but bad UI could break any game, no matter how good.
Futura City has the best “User Interface” of any Infinity terrain I’ve used.
Two very heavy parcels arrived from Slovenia. I had ordered (a year ago, now) two FCB One bundles, a Helipad, and some acrylic signs. Within this article, I’ll only be talking about the Futura City Building bundles, as I dropped my terrain bag last month and broke the Helipad and other scenery. The Helipad and signs are perfectly serviceable, of course, nothing fascinating to say about them.
I want to talk about the Futura City stuff, however, because I think this might be the best Infinity terrain on the market, on a metric of utility.
A big problem I have with other terrain is that it is lovely, but too tightly constructed to easily play with; or else ugly, but functional. Systema made a thing that surfs the sweet peak of a bell curve between lovely and functional in their Futura City Buildings. The doors and panels sit snug, but easily pop open. Each room has attentive detail. Each floor of rocks into place, and tends not to budge, unless you want it to.
Furthermore, the sets feature smartly-designed interior walls, and scatter. Look at that lovely stuff! The tables and chairs aren’t some quaternary thing you pay extra to complete your city set―the tables and chairs cut out of the unused parts of the MDF for the Futura buildings. Combine that with easy-to-move door and window panels, and I am totally smitten.
Interior detail is often neglected, which is why I think that you see that players won’t bother to enter buildings, unless they must: An empty room is a death trap. Given the interior detail, we play the Futura buildings’ interiors as Low Visibility and Saturation, which is a good abstraction for the detail they have. I don’t play the in-or-out-but-not-thru houserule that is popular on buildings, as apparently Corvus Belli staff dislike that one. It also helps to represent the difficulty of dodging a room full of fire, while also making the buildings a natural sniper perch.
I do wish there was a clause for Saturation, that a model wasn’t penalized by Saturation if he is in the Saturation Zone but firing out, for things like this and Nimbus―but that’s a post for another time.
The color scheme I chose is incidentally similar to the studio pallet, but was born from my experience as a commercial painter: dull floors, white ceilings, colorful walls. Extremely common for interior paint. I think it turned out great.
The one significant detraction I have―or warning that I should make―is that these buildings were clearly designed before the modern scale creep of Infinity. So, there is no way that your HMG Hsien is going to fit in on a Futura Building floor. You may have to replace models with an Silhouette marker. Standard run-and-gun poses fit fine otherwise.
It was an exhausting amount of MDF to snip, sand, and glue through to get to the finished product, but worth it.
QUALITY
Little is wasted on the MDF sheets. The game functionality of the Futura City stuff is miles ahead of other terrain I have used. The Slovenians who made it clearly learned a lot of lessons when playing wargames, so this is really top-tier stuff for gaming.
AESTHETICS
Pleasant, good, normal. Not as mind-blowing as some MDF stuff you can find out there, but the Futura aesthetic is both form and function. The inclusion of essentially “free” interior scatter bumps Futura City buildings over the average.
ASSEMBLY
Assembly is mostly straightforward. There are only a couple niggling issues I have with the Futura City: the laser etching leaves bumps in the points where the model connects to itself. I did sand down these points, but even a little bump makes the fit unflush. So sand the bumps good and hard.
The other issue is a minor one; the interior wall of the bottom floor tends to come undone, but that is more my mistake for having assembled it with generic superglue, instead of wood glue.
On the roof tiles, the holders for the divider insere do require a bit of fananglin’, but only a bit.
It’s also just a lot to assemble for each bundle. Not remarkably bad or good.
VALUE
Great! If you can get past the shipping cost outside of the European Union, these buildings are tremendously playable. My favorite scenery set for Infinity at the moment.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
I did not have to contact Systema, as everything arrived in good order―but everything arrived in good order.
Lonely Artichoke 