Now to try the game out there was no way I was going to buy a load of the FW boards or spend many hours scratch building something. What we needed was something cheap, quick and easily transportable/storable.
So I came up with the idea of casting some 'pillars' which could be used as corners and ends of walls, the walls themselves could be made from card and slotted into position, similarly the doors would be finnboard which can be slotted home.
For a 3 by 3 foot gaming area I needed to cast 29 pillars, which was something of a pain but thankfully i've now got all of them done.
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| Finnboard door slotted into the central groove. |
The pillars are heavy and solid which was intentional, last thing you want is the walls moving with the slightest touch during a game. Hopefully these have enough weight to them that they stay put. Quality of casts wasn't important as if I really go for ZM and decide to do some proper terrain the pillars will be scrapped for something much better.
The walls will be slotted into the outer grooves giving us thick walls without the cost of making walls which were actually substantial.
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| Some walls slotted into place. |
I had a grid printed out onto some A0 sheets, two of them together will give us a 3x3 gaming area. Only £6 to get printed which was well worth paying as I really didn't face drawing all those lines by hand.
My friend will be cutting some more walls out of card so that by the time we play we will be able to do several layouts to try.
In the meantime I aim to put together some scatter terrain to go in the 'rooms', such as barrels and crates. For this I cast a lot of pieces when I was doing the pillars.
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| The resin barrels are better casts and they will be the ones which you will be partially able to see under a tarp. |
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| A shed load of crates and even more barrels. |
Wow! Very nice for quick terrain! I am very impressed! Where the walls cast out of plaster for the weight?
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work!
David
The walls are just cardboard, the pillars though are plaster as it is cheap, which with this many casts was very important, and weighty.
DeleteThat is definitely the way to go Matt, you could even mount them on some pegboard or similar so they locked into position and you wouldnt need to glue.
ReplyDeleteSick!
Is this a mold you would sell? I would definitely buy one.
To be honest the mould is a one off, the master was a very rough build from lego and styrene partially held together with cellotape. To get the master out I had to break it apart (which was a nightmare to do and resulted in drawing blood twice.
DeleteI could redo the master to do a mould if you really wanted to buy one but i'm not sure you would really want casts of these unless you only wanted them for testing the rules as I am, they really aren't good enough for 'permanent' long term terrain.
Cool mate no worries! They do look good from the pics though but if you do stick with it and make your own modular sets with a design you are more happy with and of this height, count me in.
DeleteThere is the chance I may do something in the future. But it won't be for a while as I have too many other projects on the go. If I did do a full on ZM board it would be modular with separate walls and pillars which slot together (i've already spent time thinking about how I would do it...)
DeleteSo Ric, when are you bringing your toys over for a game? I'm not THAT far away.
ReplyDeleteSure, sort out flights and a hotel for me and i'll pop over.
Deletebtw, sorted out why some of your earlier comments didn't show up. Blogger decided they were spam and stuck them in a different folder I hadn't noticed until today. They should now show up on the blog.
You do excellent work! I'm adding you to the blogroll over on my blog.
ReplyDeleteCheers!
DeleteI would love to own a board like this! I have made my own Zone Mortalis table, but this saves a lot of space, and looks great! If you're intrested in selling a copy of the master, please contact me!
ReplyDelete