Recently we highlighted an ongoing kickstarter for game aids, Objective Ctrl. The high level description here is that they provide transparent game tools like objective markers, terrain footprints for GW layouts, and your standard handy measuring tool. Recently I was lucky enough to receive a package of their upcoming products and play a game with said products at NOVA.
Thanks to Objective Ctrl for providing us with a copy of the product for review purposes.
Playing with Objective Ctrl Game Aids
I played a test game in the NOVA 40k GT hall on one of the unused tables. For those who have not attended the lighting was… not ideal (which you’ll see in these photos). This ended up being a blessing in disguise for my review however, since it provided a stress test for what might be the most non-ideal circumstances for these transparent tools to be used in. Additionally, being at NOVA meant that I could compare them directly to the standard plexiglass used by Games Workshop at their US Open series events (GW lent terrain sets to NOVA for this year’s event).
The Area Terrain Footprint Bases
You can see above the comparison between both types of Objective Ctrl terrain bases (anti-glare on the left and standard on the right), and the GW Open plexiglass (top) here. It’s obvious right away that the Objective Ctrl terrain bases provide a much more visually defined footprint than the GW plexiglass, which is much appreciated. I cannot tell you how many times during this event that I either misjudged where the plexiglass was or completely missed it all together, something which didn’t happen once in our test game.
In addition, Objective Ctrl’s stuff has a much lower profile then the plexiglass which means it obstructs movement way less often than the plexiglass. The one downside to the design here is that the bases are prone to sliding around if you aren’t careful. This is easy to avoid (and a problem with GW plexiglass as well), but it’s relatively easy to avoid if you’re mindful of it when playing.
Objective Markers
The objective markers are made of the same material as the terrain bases and layer below the terrain footprints nicely. I’m not the biggest fan of transparent objective markers on a personal level, but these certainly get the job done. The footprint is clear, it’s easy to know if you’re on it or not, and the mat below comes through. You can see in the picture below what everything looks like set up together, and it makes for a very readable battlefield even when there’s minis scattered all over and the lighting is bad.
I also received some play aids with my terrain footprints and objective markers; A standard easy measuring tool with 9”, 3”, and 1” sections, something that’s not exactly a new concept but certainly nice to have, and some battleshock markers. I kind of wrote off the battleshock markers as nice to have, but during our game we actually found them very valuable (that probably had a lot to do with playing a game with chaos knights and Tyranids but I digress).
If I have any complaint with these, its that their small size and transparency makes them easy to miss at a glance during a game.
The Measurement Tool
Overall the Objective Ctrl package presents a really nice combination of products to help set up GW layout tables easily and without hassle. At $90 (at the time of this review) this seems like a set up that’s very worth picking up if you’re lacking these aids already. If you already have objective markers and terrain footprints, though? Probably not unless you’re having readability issues or hate how tall your footprints are.
You can find the Kickstarter for Objective Ctrl’s tabletop game aids here.
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