Throwback Post: Building a Mordhem Board

Here's the first in what will probably be a few different posts recapping some of the highlights of my hobbying throughout the year before I jumped on the blogwagon. In this case, how I decided to build a bespoke gaming board in under a month for Under the Dice Fest this past May.

I started with some 18"x18" square pieces of plywood a carpenter friend of mine cut down to size, though you could easily get this done at the hardware store when you buy it (I had gotten mine secondhand so this didn't apply to me). I firstly glued down 18" squares of pink XPS insulation foam over the wood, figuring I might add some recessed details or other, below-street-level things on these or future tiles. I ran out of full sheets of the foam after 3 complete tiles, but using some smaller pieces I was able to make an L-shaped corner with plans to add another taller section in the remainder or maybe a harbor area.

Since elevation is a big factor in Mordheim and I was doubting my ability to bang out a city block's worth of new buildings in the short weeks before the event, I also cut some riser blocks out of 2" XPS to block line of sight and create visual interest, especially in places where two boards pushed together would form little alcoves or alleyways. I could have kept these risers modular and separate, but went with permanent installations to cut down on the amount of surface area I would have to detail under a time crunch. My goal was for each quarter of the board to be modular, so you could rotate and swap out the different sections for a bunch of replayability and variety. I also wanted some orientations to have room for buildings at ground level, to break up longer avenues and offer cover from archers.

Starting some initial layout ideas for where to put risers/buildings. For reference, the board was at this stage less than 9 days before the event. Goddamnit Ben!

Having played on Steve of Hive Scum's Mordheim board at Adepticon and been impressed with his cork paving stone technique, I stole it wholecloth for my own board. I'm pretty sure he covers it in detail in a few of their podcast eps, but to recap: you score and break apart cork tiles into vaguely rectangular shapes, rake them with a metal wire brush to score in some more surface detail, glue them down, then spackle over the entire thing to fill in the more subtle cork-y texture and "grout" between the individual tiles.

Forbidden milkshake. Apparently a photo of Drydex spackle was cooler to me than getting more WIP shots of the buildings and board. #priorities.

I planned on using cork for the ground level streets and easy-peel Readi-board foamcore for the riser tops, which when de-papered makes for a uniformly flat, easily textured foam to make tiled pavestones without having to mill down strips of XPS foam on my hotwire table. The weekend before NEMO I completely ran out of my supply and ran to my local dollar store to get a few sheets. Somehow, for the first time in my life they were completely sold out of this type of foamcore. Shit.

What ensued was a really hodge podge and frantic couple days of milling pink and blue XPS foam into strips, then hacking them up into squares and rectangles of varying sizes before glueing them down in a way that looked realistic. I often struggle with how to make flagstones look satisfying to my monkey brain, but I found a really good guide on Rob Hawkins' hobby blog that not only showed the process, but wrote it out in a way I could understand and put into practice, saving me a lot of headache down the line. Laying down rectangles to make bricks sounds easy enough, but doing it in a pattern that kept my OCD dormant took a lot of trial and error up until doing it with his tips.

Moving away from the board itself on over to buildings: I had a handful of partially constructed ruined tudor-inspired buildings, mostly built when I got back into the hobby watching Black Magic Craft's Youtube videos. Although the outer shells of buildings were relatively complete, there was a lot of tedious steps yet to go, namely bricking foundations, putting tudor-style planking outside and inside, adding flooring, windows, doors, shingles, etc. There's no one way to do these steps and I tried a lot of approaches to find the ones that looked acceptable for the limited time I had. I relied on many different size coffee stir sticks, various gauges of square balsa wood dowels, cardstock, premixed tile grout for wall textures, and some 3d printed windows from various sources.

One of many abandoned works-in-progress I salvaged for the board. This one actually didn't even have the wood elements when I started, just the foam base. Balsa dowels for the corner connections and coffee stirrers for the wall beams already make it feel halfway done.

This is about how far most of the buildings were when I started working on the board a couple weeks out. A rough shape, maybe some ruined walls, some initial brickwork if I had been particularly inspired before putting something in the pile of opportunity for future-Ben.

A rear-view showing the floorboards and the roof construction, plus a little sniper platform that could be accessible by an elevated walkway or rope ladder. Mordheim relies heavily on elevation, so I made sure some buildings were 3+ stories tall, and this one got a final 5th level attic later on.

Although I used foam bricks for most of my buildings, I used rough-textured paper pulp egg cartons to cut large stone blocks on this building intended to be a church, with a stained glass STL designed by Wyloch's Armory for a 40k project.

More buildings and a bell tower I digitially kitbashed for the church building. Also on the mat are some rubble piles I made out of scraps of XPS, coffee stirrers, dirt, and extra 3d printed barrels and other scatter, based on scraps of MDF. Primer really does hide all sins.

After using spray primer to get the buildings blocked in, I hit all of them with a white zenithal from my airbrush to pick out all that lovely wood, stone, and stucco texture before preshading everything with a sepia ink. Leif from Devs and Dice uses this on his Mordheim terrain which tends to look perfect for a colorful yet dingy feel. From there, it was a matter of picking a few different colors of craft paint for a building and its details, blocking things in, then highlighting up. Although I drybrsuhed most things like the wooden planks and shingles, for the walls I just stippled lighter color towards the center of each "panel" of stucco in between the crossbeams.

Color isn't a bad thing if you make it look splotchy and lived in! I used yellow instead of the off-whites for this one's walls and a red roof to make it seem like it was in the old colors of Osterland.

There wasn't really an "a-ha!" moment when it all came together for me. I did basecoats and drybrushes on the houses and scatter terrain, primed the board in grey and gave it an initial drybrush (I finished washing the board tiles and re-drybrushing them in the hotel the night before the event, BEFORE finishing my warband 😬).

The bottom right tile in this orientation was the one where I had planned on adding a harbor or some other inset feature due to the L-shaped foam "ground level" around a larger recessed area. Then everyone who saw my board absolutely LOVED the wyrdstone comer that tore through it as a defining feature of the set...so I guess I have to build an all new harbor area another day.

Here's a shot I got of my board set up at NEMO, in a configuration I thought would lend to some fun, tactical gameplay. Some other pieces of scatter terrain and ruins I had made in the past also made their way into the final product.

And the "house rules" that accompanied my board. Nothing too major here, I mostly just wanted feedback on my first real gaming board that was put together way too fast with too little thought.

In the end I was incredibly proud of how quickly I took this project from start to finish! There were definitely times I felt like I would let down the organizers with what I would manage to bring to the event, but I have to say I impressed myself on this one. I heard lots of nice things about the board as it arrived and saw it feature in a few of the online recaps of the event (which was insane, as SO many other boards were more worthy of attention in my opinion!) Best of all I think, is all the mileage I have gotten out of these simple, tileable boards in the months since NEMO wrapped up. For example:

Here's my buddy Matt (squared_paints) and I playing some Necropolis28 on a single board tile. An 18" tile works very well for a 16" diorama scale game, just deploy 1" inside a board edge!

Later this year, playing a game of Trench Crusade on the full 36" setup. The plain grey stonework and built-in risers gives a decent approximation of some ruined 1900s settlment-turned-trench warzone.

An Atrous Myre: Recap and Batrep Posts

At last, dear reader comes the epic conclusion to my British Invasion saga. Having arrived in London the day before an Atrous Myre, I spent a few jet lagged hours that evening putting finishing touches on my gathering before preparing to do battle with the dead in a church out in the country. Y'know, normal Saturday stuff.

For ease of future identification, my roster (from left to right):
Lord Arsis, Revenant
Arsis' Squire, Husk (Acolyte)
Familiar (didn't actually make it into my final list!)
The Hound, Husk
Slitherstich, Beast

Game 1: The Black Scour of Arsis vs Zombie Stu's Necrophilliacs

Things kicked off with my warband fighting a beautifully macabre blood warband puppeteered by Zombie Stu. The board was divided neatly down the middle by a crumbling bridge, with very narrow M.C. Escher-esque stairways leading up to its zenith (the bridge was the backdrop for my warband shot above). As most of my experience playing Necropolis has been on flat boards with modular scatter terrain, I was in for a painful lesson when my Hound advanced up the stairs Turn 2 and was pushed off by a well-timed Tide of Vermin spell by Stu's lich--costing almost half his hit points!

Arsis and his Squire look on toward the high ground, sensing the Hound has made little headway in its ascent after a treacherous fall...

That early maneuver made me much more careful about my positioning on the narrow ramparts, while Stu's flying beasts and familiar began to swarm about the more difficult-to-reach objectives.

Past the arched bridge, the horde gathers strength (that bone is the mana where the Hound was ripped apart after its untimely fall from great heights)

For such a deceptively simple board, there was a lot of great tactical elements at play. I was able to pin down Stu's monsters in melee with my beast beneath the arch of the bridge, only to summon the Hound behind my ranks where it could make use of its polearm's improved attack range. The acolyte scrambled for objectives while my Revenant focused on cutting down chaff with its impressive statline (there were victory points earned for the event for each model slain or pushed, so I went wth quantity over quality!)

The ichorous remnants of a foolish Bloodling, its trinkets ripe for plunder by my stalwart Skeletons!

After a very tense back-and-forth of summoning and killing each other's summons in the shadow of the bridge (where most objectives had been squirrled away into cover or dropped by slain models in the meatgrinder) I managed to eke out the win with 3/5 objectives! It was a great game and an important reminder about the benefits of pushing models with strength or spell going into the rest of the event...

Stu had a much more impressive display box than mine, with great use of magnets for his bats!

Game 2: The Black Scour of Arsis vs Sam's Court of Thorns and Roses

Another beautifully bespoke board with almost four(!) levels of elevation including dank caverns, crumbling temple floors, ransacked scaffolding, and a crumbling bell tower.

In the foreground: our target, a decrepit cultist of the Myre, practitioner of forgotten magicks in the long-sealed catacombs of the Endless City.

Round 2 was a rematch of sorts. At my first narrative event ever, this year's Under the Dice Fest, Sam was not only the first of the British Invasion hobbyists I met at the event, he was also my Round 1 opponent in the New England Mordheim Open. At NEMO Sam was the best opponent I could have asked for: knowledgeable but humble, lenient for the sake of narrative, not taking him or the game too seriously but never failing to inject a flair of drama and atmosphere into the story we created together. (not to mention how easy on the eyes he is! #besthobbyboyfriend)

In the background: Sam's beautifully rendered skeleton knights. A medieval manuscript in the unflesh!

For this game however, as we were both much more familiar with this game's rules and each other as players, I was prepared to meet him head on and not let our torrid history get in the way of playing with the drive of a man who flew across an ocean to be there that day.

From the very beginning, we were having a blast describing our actions and "bargaining" with each other for cool narrative things to do ("can my skeleton burst through this boarded up window at the end of his jump?" "I don't see why not...but let's say you roll bad and he's definitely falling to the bottom").

Seriously, look at that smoulder. The man know's what he's working with.

My revenant had the Bone Spear spell which is pretty nasty; by dealing HP damage to a Bone model I can do a massive chunk of damage to an enemy at range. I knew from careful reading of the rules that I could inflict the initial damage to ANY Bone model, meaning Sam's gathering could be dealt damage for feeding me the ammunition I would subsequently hurl back in his face; what I realized with glee was that the NPC target in this mission also had the Bone keyword, so I could hurt him to hurt Sam!

Not to be outdone in the realm of cool stunts, Sam used his Lich's Puppet spell to draw the NPC out of my threat range and into the welcoming arms of his long-limbed Protector...who subsequently shattered the Cultist I had nearly taken out with my Bone Spear shenanigans. To add insult ot injury, rather than attack my injured beast or husk and shatter them with ease he then climbed to the top of the bell tower and executed a flawless pile driver, destroying both of my models and his own. Another lesson learned in the Necropolis crucible: falling is just as dangerous as pushing, if you're willing to risk it.

Top right: the very gangly knight could have smacked either of my models and remained intact, but that wouldn't be very sporting...
Bottom left: another cultist emerges, and the Lady draws them into her clutches with beguiling words...

There was plenty of dynamism to this mission, with new cultists spawning as each died in turn in farther reaches of the map, leading to a chase to be the next to claim one's skull. As one emerged within range of his lich's Puppet spell, I summoned my shattered Acolyte back behind the wretch to steal her kill! She in turn summoned her Protector at her side, ready to punish me in turn...back and forth we went.

It was a close game, with both of us testing our mettle as strategists as well as storytellers. In the final turn, one objective lay at the bottom of the map with several models on either side poised to leap down and claim it, OR fall and crush a model who dared to do so, taking it for themselves instead. In the end, I managed to get the last drop into the pit and secure the treasure with enough HP to withstand another top-rope maneuver, narrowly pulling ahead. Another iconic battle with Mr. Cupboard of Shame.

Game 3: vs Ramshackle Curtis' Fiery Ghosts

For round 3 I snagged one of my favorite boards of the event (and many others--it was voted the best board of the event!) with an ingenius tableau of wall facades with stacked alcoves full of mummified remains. I felt viscerally thrown back to exploring the early crypts and barrows of Skyrim just looking at it. My opponent was sculptor extraordinaire Curtis of Ramshackle Games; I had seen Curtis' warband online prior to the event, a swarm of brilliant, flaming skeleton made from sponge flocking which he ran as a Plasm gathering.

I mean, c'mon? The OSL on the brazier AND the flaming skeletons? *chef's kiss*

I had not yet played as nor against a Plasm gathering in my Necropolis career. I knew they could fly to ignore elevation challenges and were generally squishier than most undead, but I was on a winning streak as the foreigner to beat. What could go wrong?

A lot, dear reader.

In this mission, our two forces contested a series of relics. Suddenly one of the relics burst to [un]life-a many legged monstrosit emerging to annihilate those who desecrated its resting place! I actually felt like I had a very good handle on beating back the swarming relic-abominations.

What I did not have a good handle on was Curtis sending his many, MANY fiery ghosts up to the 7" platforms in the middle of the board, then launching them off like incandescent lemmings onto my poor models' heads. For context, in Necropolis28 each inch fallen (or fallen onto from) incurs a point of damage that armor cannot protect from. In just two activations of ghostly firebombing, Arsis was slain.

The meagre scraps of my models tried to take cover beneath the bridges and risers to avoid being fallen upon, but there were too many foes to cover every angle. In the end, I was tabled before we even got to the final round of the match.

Slithersttch, my lone survivor, seconds before an all-encompassing conflaguration engulfed him and his objectives.

I did later discover we had made a slight rules errors; part of Curtis' strategy was summoning an expendable fire familiar as a spell to protect his Lich in the back ranks, while freeing up his skeletal legion to do other things than fly-drop-kill me. As it turns out, that spell (which was responsible from probably 2.5/4 deaths on my side) can only be used once per game. So while we technically may never know how things should have gone down, with his hellfire carpetbomb tactics and sheer numbers advantage over me, I suspect it would have been the same end result. Still, an epic game of cinematic proportions.

When you're exploring the crypts and realize you forgot to turn the stove off at home...

Game 4: The Black Scour vs Mangling Mini Tara's Bone Brigade and Mike Hutchinson's Hodge-Podged Wretched

The final scenario saw a three-way smackdown--our forces rallied at the final, gestating hub of the Myre. There, one warlord would be chosen to join the hive mind consciousness and embrace everlasting power and knowledge. For the rest, only a cold end in the depths would await.

Tara and Mike, two absolutely cracking gents, and I deployed in our corners. This was another fun match of banter and bargaining, where we decided the pit at the center would be our goal. Despite the very creepy transhumanism elements of the mission, we really played this one up as a top-rope WWE pit fight: get in the pit, get jumped on top of to death, repeat.

Early on, Tara got absolutley mangled (pun intended) by Mike and I deploying on either side of his force. I got too greedy and pushed Arsis to try and wipe out his models surrounding the central pit, but he was struck down in an onslaught of Bone husks and spells from Mike's lich. Without access to spells or summoning, it was only a matter of time befor my luck ran out.

The little resin bones were all that remained of my revenant and my polearm wielding husk. Tragic.

Before I was completely tabled however, one of the liches in play rolled a 1 for their spellcasting, leading to an arcane mishap! Another roll of 1 on the table meant an opposing player would get to choose and cast a spell from their list free of charge. A tense roll-off went to me...and a clever use of Summon brough Arsis back to the fore atop the crumbling ruins, ready to slay!

I threw a shower of bones that exploded down amidst the gathered masses below, cackling with glee. Then Mike's ghost lady flew up and eviscerated Arsis in melee, and I was on the backfoot again. The Endless City giveth and taketh freely.

Narratively, this game alse seemed to mark a turning point for my warband's lore. Throughout the event, players earned points for various deeds towards a certain faction chosen in advance. Having earned enough points over the three prior games, Tara was able to bring one of the animated grave horrors from Round 3 as an ally given his status as a champion of the Myre's infestation. After his minion fell in battle however, we decided the creature would follow its rules as written and re-span, unbound to any loyalty as an untethered NPC.

Although my chosen faction for the event was the Iconoclasts, undead who abhor and seek to destroy the power of the Myre, with Arsis defeated and likely buried for eternity in the depths of the Myre's clutches I was willing to shift my allegiance. My strategy for the rest of the match became using The Acolyte to spend its entire activation Chanting for mana, then betting more mana than my opponents could muster to enlist this powerful servant as my thrall for a turn. In the Atrous dark, fear triumphed over faith as this last lieutennant of my gathering sold itself to the will of the growing Horde...

Although Mike was soundly the real winner of this melee, amidst our banter we cheekily debated the open-to-interpretation wording around the 'Lurk' action, whereby a model can pass its activation until later in the round. Although RAI a model has to keep using its activation points each time it Lurks, Mike and I went back and forth Lurking with abandon at the last turn of the game. Thus our warbands remained cloaked in shadow for the rest of their eternal suffering!

Post-Game(s)

After a wonderful viewing of all the gatherings brought to the event and a brief awards ceremony for the event, folks began splitting off to partake in other skirmish game demos and debriefs in the hall while renaissance man Andrew of Meridian Miniatures serenaded us with a soft yet haunting cello performance. Immaculate vibes!

As I really wanted to play on the ammonite shell board that had been occupied throughout the event, I took the opportunity to introduce some folks to one of my favorite games to come out this year, Omen Tide. It uses the same board size and penchant for detail of Necropolis, featuring two bands of three cosmic cultists battling for seaborne supremacy. It was a blast playing on such a cinematic board instead of my coffee table at home, especially with the cello backing giving the ambiance of a creaking ship swaying amidst a terrible storm.

Finally, as if there hadn't been enough Necropolis throughout the day, I joined Daan @mesreg for a final game of our gatherings in this cool modular cemetary board. Daan had a neat trick of sending his deathstar Aberrant Husk towards me, blowing it up each time it was slain and injuring all my models in a burst. Another memorable game, with his first turn opening with an Arcane Mishap roll and detonating around his entire gathering's deployment. I very nearly lost, but a later Arcane Mishap where I repeated my summon-my-own-slain-summoner hat trick from earlier in the day, narrowly beating Daan out on objectives.

Final Thoughts

There's a lot more I could touch on about my entire sojourn to the UK, let alone the various other details of Atrous Myre. Each of these games could have been their own post brimming with detail, but I lack brevity as it is inAbove all, I want to highlight how awesome these types of community events are. I've struggled with pretty severe social anxiety most of my life but the more hobby and/or Inq28 events I attend, the more I feel myself making new friends, waiting to catch up with older ones, and feeling my creative battery recharge and renewed for more projects. While going across the pond for a day of gaming is a pretty extreme case, for me it was 100% worth it for the above factors. For anyone who bothered to read this, there is a community somewhere out there for you (probably much closer to home!) and if you've been on the fence, I implore you to take that plunge.

Many thanks to everyone who attended Myre whether I knew you beforehand or not, everyone who brought a board, Peter for making a top-notch game with such an incredible following, Ryan and Andrew for the minis, Daan for wandering London with me later, John for the ride/beers/White Dwarfs, Mike for the shirt, Kim for supporting me in my transatlantic voyage, and Gage for being the #1 reason I even considered doing this in the first place (which he will deny).

Long live the Dead.