Having committed to Salute next year we are working with our local games club Wigan Wargames to put on a large participation game next year. Initial building is being carreid out by Dale and myself before we haul it over to the club for detailing. This post will act as a record of the game board build and hopefully offer you some inspiration in your own projects.

The background;

Talkis was not only a very inhospitable planet but it was also uninhabited, technically it belonged to the Protolene Kharnates but they had never been settled here. After discovering rich deposits of the fuel mineral Otilium the Arc Fleet spent no time in deploying there and commencing extraction and refinement operations. The human presence grew exponentially as other resources were found and exploited.

It was only a matter of time before the true owners of this world found out and came to reclaim what was theirs. The Protolene came in without warning, the first hammer blow came at Kyushu Bay, the planets largest Otilium refinery. The attack came swiftly and unexpectedly across the ice of the frozen bay, the agile walkers and shock troops of the Kharnates surging relentlessly across the meters thick ice destroying everything in their path. The Refinery’s garrison must do everything to slow the Protolene advance to give fleet time to deploy extra men and materiel.

The build;

Having had a chat about it and done some pencil drawings Dale created a final concept of the board in photoshop.

The board will be 4 ft wide by 12ft long split into 6 2ft x 4 ft sections for transportation.

The grey areas show the elevated land mass whilst the white area will be the bay which will be an area of frozen ice.

The initial build involve creating the frames from 1″ infill and then attaching those to 6 mm mdf sheet that would form the base of the board.

We then marked out the foam cuts we would need, “roughly” sticking to the plan. (you’ll notice the center section of the bay does not bulge, as we did not like the look of it actually on the board)

Marking and cutting underway

I make myself look busy

Dale uses a table scroll saw to cut the high density blue foam

Beach areas are carved into the foam with a box cutter and then sanded to there final shape

The basic board is built, note the screw holes where the mdf sheet attaches to the frame work have been filled in.

A final shot of the first two days of the build will an ARC Fleet Walker just to give you a sense of scale