Thursday 5 January 2012

Review: System ∞ Street lighting Set

 

Little and Large, and no I'm not talking about the Deva and TAG

Well I thought I'd better get on with reviewing what I refer to as the 'street clutter' products from Sarissa Precisions System ∞ range. I'll keep them brief though as they aren't major pieces of terrain. So first up are the street lights...

Product description

Well there aren't really that many piece to put together thankfully. The set comes with 3 tall street lights and 3 short street lights. There are 6 bases to mount them on and you'll have 18 laser cut acrylic discs to go with them to represent the lights. Mine are weird and whacky colours that Sarissa sent me to show off the range of acrylic they could do, but I believe the sets come with a clear acrylic with a slight blue hint... classy looking!



Usefulness 6.5 out of 10

That score might make you think that these lights aren't a worthwhile purchase. In a way that's true. These won't 'add' necessarily to your games of Infinity. Although they might add to other games. However, coupled with other pieces of scenery these actually might be quite good on the board for helping to cut down Line of Sight from high vantage points. But reality is they're not going to be game changing. Hence the low 'usefulness' score. Please remember that the usefulness score in terms of scenery is about how effectively things alter the games you're playing. I view these pieces as nice 'eye candy' to put down on the board to give your battlefields a bit of character, rather than game changers.

Character 8 out of 10

Hence them getting a higher character score! They look like they could be either bits of scrap metal or scaffolding strapped together with some lights stuck on. Or some sleek looking piece of urban design. Again I guess it all comes down to how they get painted by you. However, they do fit in really well with the rest of the range. But for me it's the 'character' that these sorts of incidental terrain add to the overall effect of a gaming table. They turn a disparate collection of buildings into a town.

They're quite tall... this is the short one!

Detail 6.5 out of 10

There isn't really that much detail, but then again go outside and take a look at some street lamps... just don't look too closely or the men in white coats might come and take you to a nice 3 star hotel with full board and breakfast! They're hardly the most detailed of objects anyway street lights. I'm not really too sure how you could 'jazz' up street lights. Reality is only a very odd breed of urban design town planners have interest in such matters... the acrylic lights on these do look nice though!

Quality 8 out of 10

As with everything I've had from Sarissa the components have been well constructed. These are no different as you'd expect!

Service N/A

Well as you probably know by now I had these sent for free so I can't fairly review the undeniably awesome service that Sarissa Precision obviously give... but I'll say this again. Spend £30 and you get free shipping worldwide. That's awesome that is.

and this unsurprisingly would be the tall one!

Price 8.5 out of 10

£5 for 6 street lights. That seems like a good price to me. Sure they might not be the first thing on your shopping  list from the range, but it's great that they've offered these sorts of street clutter within the range to help give your battlefields that lived in look.

Overall 7.5 out of 10

Hmm... looking at some of the scores I've given so far you might think I don't actually like these street lights. That seriously isn't the case and couldn't be further from the truth. I actually really appreciate that these street lights are in the range at all. We all get so focused on getting the buildings and other things right that we forget about the everyday incidental details that make our towns and cities what they are. Not having these details on our battlefields some times takes away from the overall effect achieved. Normally you can't quite put your finger on it either. Well its stuff like this that makes you boards look 'lived' in. Peace out!

7 comments:

  1. @GADAFINY, thanks. I try my best!!!

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  2. These seem really good value.

    I'm sometimes a bit nervous of tall, slim terrain on my tabletop as there's always that worry that they're going to take a tumble at the slightest knock when someone leans over to move their minis; is the base on these big enough to negate this?

    The tall lights look really tall but from the pictures of the components it looks as though it might be possible to snip the top part off creating more of the smaller lights.

    My initial reaction was that Sarissa are probably missing a trick by not providing an option to select the funky orange lights, however, I anticipate that the clear/blue tinted lights are likely to fit in with more boards/colour schemes and I can imagine it'd be a bit of a ballache for them to start offering a wide spectrum of available colours, some of which would probably never get selected.

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  3. @Gary Peach March Attack Good point, that would be a simple approach :) although, might cause damage to a flocked board.

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  4. Old Wargamers are rich... in penny and 2 penny bases...

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  5. @Hendie, a couple of things really:

    1) If people are being clumsy and knocking things over I find the best way to dissuade them is to punch them in the face. After the first few times they soon learn to be more careful!!!
    2) If you're not that aggressive weigh them down like Gary suggest with a 2p coin, or that mickey mouse money that they use in Greece, its probably worth much less :P

    Also I've just thrown my cats at these. Not literally I might add before somebody gets the RSPCA on me. Nope I plonked them in front of Tybalt, code name Mr Wibbs. He pawed at them and like weebles they wobbled a bit but didn't fall down. I might video tape it actually as he clearly got annoyed with them!!! lol. Yeah so that might be animal cruelty. What I'm saying is that they're fairly stable any way I guess.

    The dimensions are that the base is roughly a 2" by 2" square and the tall light is about 10" to the top and the small light is about 7.5" to the top. Even if they feel the HDF isn't likely to damage any miniatures. It really isn't. Hope that helps.

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