Barsoom Board Complete

Scenery of the Day

Quick and dirty update on this one. Added some small touches to the Barsoom board and pretty well finished it now.

Main points:

• Sprayed the whole of the exposed wood in red.
• Added some appropriate graphics.
• Lightened the tone with a bit more dry brushing.
• Added detail on various parts.

There is always more to add .. but for now I reckon I will call 'complete' on this project.




Pics :

Finished up with red paint on all parts of the exposed wood. Found an excellent Alien font (will lookup the reference to that soon - lost it now) .. and painted in the name of each player on each tray. This side reads 'Tribal Warlord'.

Closer view of the ground. Managed to neutralize much of the red tone by adding more light brown, and dry brushing with ivory.

On the stringy parts of the ground, I have worked out that this is actually 'Martian Gold', a sort of greenish tinged gold substance that is found in abundance on Mars. There is a lot of this stuff on the board.

Here are some native Martians on the warpath. Actually NKE Egyptians and a Phillistine chariot from my DBA collection, but it still works. The board as it turns out is not overly ideal for DBA / HoTT basing ... if you are a rules lawyer. Due to the rough surface, the bases are rarely in full contact with the ground.  If you value scenic impact over rules lawyerism however, then its perfect.

Other side of the board - reads 'Forces d'Good'. Oh No ! .. whats that advancing from the other side of the board ?

Holy Cydonia !  .. its tribal Martians heading towards the Stronghold. To Arms, To Arms !!

Well, actually more DBA collection - Aztec / Early Mexican DBA .. but they look perfectly at home on Barsoom in this case. Note the mesh to the right, being parts to a crashed spacecraft - used an excellent new material for the metallic finish. There is a small tube of metallic wax that is available from the art shop that can be rubbed on to any material to give it a metallic finish. Used it to good effect on this board.

Anyway, that was a great fun project. Looking forward to gaming on it sometime in the future.

Was having a chat with my mate Jonno today - he was once very much into Warhammer before moving on to other things. He has never heard of HoTT before, but had some great ideas to add in :

• In the moon rock areas, define these as being teleportation portals. So if a unit (aligned with the moon Deimos) enters the Deimos moon rocks, it may teleport to another cluster of moon rocks. Likewise with the Phobos moon rocks for units aligned with Phobos.
• Lets create another board for Venus ! That one would have a surface made up of thick mist and clouds - which form the contours of the board. Use a translucent substance like silicone sealer to create layers, and have the 'clouds' inside these using paint mixed with silicone.
• Lets create another board for other planets ! Pluto would be sheets of ice, the rings of Saturn - use discarded CD's somehow in the creation of the holographic surface. etc, etc. 
• Lets use a 3 foot circle board for a moon board with a rough gray texture and a few craters. When a unit moves off the 'edge' of the board, it re-appears at the opposite edge to similar circumnavigating a small moon. Awesome idea !
• Lets put all the boards for each planet in a huge circle, and use this as a gigantic interplanetary campaign - with campaign rules for moving units from one planet to the next around the circle. Woot !
• Use the 'mars' board as a 'Hades' board. Stack another faerie land woodlands board about a foot above this Hades board. In the under-realm, it would be Demons vs Angels, in the above realm it would be Elves vs Orcs. Events in the sector of the Hades realm could influence the Woodland realm and vise versa. Magic users could possibly summon units from the under-realm to the surface. Enscorcelled units from the Woodland realm could get sucked into the under-realm. Lots of possibilities there.

That was about half an hour's conversation anyway. Pretty exciting ideas there, and plenty of material to try out new construction and gaming ideas. Be very keen to hear any more ideas from readers too.

Stay tuned - I'm sure there will be more to come in this area.

Enjoy.