Building towards the future

Having painted a playable collection of miniatures last year, I was finally able to play some full-sized games. My sparse collection of scenery, however, meant that it was a challenge to make the games varied enough to feel like separate encounters.

When I finally completed the TTCombat dungeon tiles the dynamic of the games played on them was completely different to the 'open air' terrain. Even more than just the more limited line of sight was the atmosphere - it really felt like there was a ceiling to the dungeon, and that altered the 'atmosphere' just enough to change the mood of the game as the turns progressed. It was more claustrophobic, regardless of the game direction.

So this year I'm aiming to ramp up my efforts on terrain-building to make the games a bit more interesting.

A few months ago, inspired by MalcyBogaten's blog, I played around with a glue gun and some mini jenga bricks to produce some rudimentary ruined walls which, after a quick black base coat and white dry brush, could be arranged to represent a two to three room building. The first order of the day was to add to this selection:

What I have been lacking in particular so far has been multiple-leveled gameplay, so I dug around the hoarded collection of boxes and containers to find some small boxes. Several strips of masking tape and a similar paint job to the ruins provided some old platforms. Now I just have to locate more boxes to go alongside them.

I also grabbed a box of kids' building blocks and spent a happy evening on the living room floor in front of Netflix playing around with them. My wife looked on in bemusement.

The first completed construction, a mixture of the building blocks and some full-sized jenga bricks, should allow either for a centrepiece plot point or encourage multi-leveled movement on the gaming field.

Mindful of one of the Tomb of the Serpent campaign scenarios, I bought a couple of bags of cotton reels to act as pillars. I've just painted up the first batch to act as freestanding columns; I'll probably try adding platforms on top with future ones, as well as adding some masking tap to give them a bit of extra texture. At least these ones can double up as plinths.

And finally, having been pointed towards Surpreme Littleness on the Lead Adventure Forum, I splashed out and spent just shy of £20 on some mdf scatter terrain. There are lots of little bits to do, some I'm working through it slowly. These are the first few bits and bobs done, and there is a load more to come!