Skirmish Battle Board

I mentioned early in the year that this summer was going to be the summer of Skirmish games for me and it's looking like its panning out that way.

Since around early May I have been tinkering on and off with a new Terrain Project. With some serious inspiration from my pal Tim at Cursed Treasures, I returned to casting Hirst Arts blocks, in order to build the Ruined Tower Piece similar to his. It wasn't a huge surprise that things went sideways on me, in that special "A.D.D" hobbyist way and this turned into a completely different project.

While getting my casting legs back with the Ruined Tower, (I have two molds, one owned, one borrowed) I just gotten to having enough blocks complete for the initial project when I started looking at all the flagstone floor tiles I was casting in that mould with any extra liquid I have from each batch..I then started pouring Fieldstone blocks as well.

If you've done any work with Hirst Blocks, you know as I do, its harder than it looks to get good results( like anything I guess) not only the casting but the building are both acquired skills if you want things to look good. since I was badly out of practice and my previous Hirst Builds were not too stellar.(not too happy with my Osgiliath Tables, City Tiles) I quickly realized that Fieldstone was a much more forgiving block than some of the others I was working with. And my Modular Fieldstone Dungeon was born. I quickly envisioned a 2' x 2' Battle Board portable as a companion piece to my pal Rich's Pirate Castle, this would be the "Pirate Castle Dungeon" so to speak, but perfect acceptable for any type of Skirmish game.



Fieldstone (or Flagstone) floor tiles are 1 inch squares..so I got out some graph paper and laid out floor plan and how many floor tiles I need. Quite a few it turned out...there are 10 in the mold and I need easily over 200..so I went to work casting in my free time and spending my monthly hobby budget on a couple more molds. As this project has developed..I decided to add the above ground wilderness section as well. There will be a 2'X 2' roof that a playable surface allowing you travel down thru into the Dungeon level. On paper this seems easy enough using removable layers of Pink foam and removable supports.

The basic 11 sections of the Board are complete and feature modular doorways, some with and some without doors. I wanted to keep it as flexible as possible for future use..there are a ton of props (including secret doors) cast as well from the various great Hirst accessory molds. I'm already well into Painting several of the pieces and this thing should be playable this weekend, where I am going to do the carpentry for the base and box its going to live in and the next step will be the Earthen sections and Cavern section (pink foam) before finally moving on to the upper level.



I plan on using this for Legends of the High Seas/ LotR SBG and single campaign scenario, or just general Fantasy skirmish gaming. I love the concept of the 2' x 2' Battle Board..and I am having so much fun with this..I am going dig in and get as much done as possible before the release of WFB 8th comes in a month steals back my attention.



I'll follow up with some insight on how did some of the stuff here, once the bottom section is 100% done and I get some detail photographs, more photos coming for sure.