Black Powder Red Earth - Game Day

Axes & Ales, my local gaming club, runs various events throughout the year. One such event was on Sunday the 5th of May, namely our Swap Meet and Game Day. As the name implies, there was plenty of haggling to be done (I picked up a few new pieces and sold some others off) and then the afternoon was ours for gaming. Having played a few games of BPRE with my mates, I took the plunge and organised a sort of Round Robin affair for my friends. There's nothing quite like a deadline to help with getting projects happening!

Remember that trusty set of cork buildings I whipped up?  Well, two just wouldn't do for a proper club showdown. So, I donned my metaphorical hard hat and constructed a further TWO sets of these bad boys.  This meant double the walls, double the doors, and double BPRE gaming. Here are some pics of their development:

That's a lot of cork! It took me 2 or 3 evenings to cut and glue them all up

I gave them a generous base coat of PVA and Black Paint.

Using painters tape again I covered up the tops of the walls and
rattle canned them with grays and reds.

 

Now that's a lot of buildings!

But wait, there's more!  A true urban warzone needs more than just buildings.  Think scattered debris, makeshift barricades... So, I delved into my boxes of bits and made a whole lot more, from treacherous tire dumps to the twisted carcasses of abandoned cars.  These little guys add so much life (or should I say, death?) to the battlefield, making every game a unique experience. 

  

Look at them all: pipes, brick, tyres - bloody awesome!

Oh, and Doors. I almost forgot to make the doors for the game. Another 60 of the buggers. That took longer than I had wanted.

 

 

I even made a custom box and lid to contain them all.

While strolling around the neighbourhood with our dog, I stumbled upon two perfectly sized plastic toolboxes, destined for the scrap heap.  With a little teamwork (and the careful application of a flame torch – thanks for the assist, Alex!), we transformed these boxes into two carrying cases for the new terrain sets.

Do you like the placard I made to cover the Bosch logo?

So, there you have it!  Two additional full-blown BPRE terrain sets complete with enough cork, scatter, and storage solutions to get our local war underway. And we had a great time too... maybe a dozen or more games were played over the day. It was great fun. Most of the guys playing had only played one or two games of BPRE previously, but that didn't detract from the day whatsoever - it's one of those games that people can pick up and play with only a little bit of coaching. 

I didn't have time to make game mats for each table, so instead we marked them
out with painter's tape.

 

One of my mates brought along his awesome minis that we used for the event.
Talk about lucky. I gave him one of the terrain sets as a thank you.

Those Red Dots are used to designate Actived Units.
They're actually white on the other side, which is helpful when
playing with some Units that get special activation sequences.

Set that blue text to the left? I made some sight and measuring tools
for the day using bits and pieces - they ended up being a lot more
useful than I had anticipated.