Hi all, welcome to my arena WIP blog.

Hopefully before too long I'll have a fully assembled and painted arena and will be able to start playing some Deathmatches, for now though I'm working on the arena itself. Currently I'm casting lots of Hirst blocks as I think they will create the perfect stage for the action. Its not a quick process and even now I still have about 50 more casts to do to produce another 100 or so floor tiles. I'm pretty happy with the quality so far, where some blocks have small air bubbles I'll hack gouges into the "stone" to make it look more battle worn.

Anyway, it'll only be a small arena because I am planning on making this into a travel case, so I can bring my arena, models and everything I need to play along with me. So the arena size is 20" * 20" and will be assembled into a frame work with will form a hinged box. I'll cut some low density foam to house the models of several bands in and the lid will probably allow room for the rulebook to slot into as well as dice and measuring tapes / templates / markers.

The idea is that the four areas around the sides of the arena where the floor cuts in will have stair cases, the band entry areas. The fancy tiles inside the arena are going to be removable covers for pits, and I'll make various "pit bottoms" so I can swap out various types, beast entry areas, sand bottomed pits, water pits, stake pits etc (pits being 2" * 2" ...

So my goal here is to bring the game into some sort of following in Melbourne, Australia. Currently I don't know of any group who plays the game and I'm hoping that a really nice arena to play on will convince my gamer mates to give it a shot and hopefully encourage regular regular meets for the system.

so without further adu, the arena thus far: (I've just roughly laid out the tiles so you get an idea for the shape and form of the arena floor.

Looks very good indeed! Love the texture on the tiles.

I am sure when the arena is finished and painted your gaming mates won't resist to have a game!

Really looking forward to see how the arena progresses!

glad you like it so far Gaelion, I've done more since this and changed some of the layout slightly so I'll post new images when I can.

I'll probably take pictures and write a report on some games in the future, at least once I have it all painted and models finished. I'll stick it all on the forum when it happens.

Gaelion: Havenť you thought about including sort of this thing in your store? I am speaking about pieces of arena (tiles, pillars, pits etc.).I really believe, there are players who would appreciate that

Shadowalker: Looks very nice Looking forward to see it finished. What material do u use?

Mostly it's light weight Hyrdocal from Woodland Scenics though some pieces are cast in ordinary plaster which is heavier though probably slightly stronger too.

I've constructed a framework for it all to sit on with foam core so that the entrance areas and pits can actually be recessed into the floor of the arena. The foam core keeps it all really light while being pretty tough. I'll be building a wooden box around it all for transport as well, its small enough to easily carry on public transport so the box will give it some much needed durability.

Indeed, I've thought about that several times, but it is something we can not afford, as all our casting time has to be spent casting the minis. And casting resin scenery is pretty time consuming.

OK, finally something to report! The local games store finally got a new shipment of Hydrocal in which enabled me to finish casting. I mounted the whole lot on a structure made of foam core and its now fully assembled. The whole board is very light, something I am very happy with as it's meant to be travel friendly.

Pics to bring you up to speed:




I am currently working on a wooden box structure to house the whole thing in, including eventually the rulebook and miniatures for various bands and beasts.
Basically this all slots into a shallow "lid" which it will be glued too, that will extend out from the outside of the board by a fair margin so it is well protected from knocks and the deeper box which will close around the arena doesn't actually touch it. The deeper box will have more height than required for the arena to enable miniatures to rest in foam inserted in the cavity. Its a 576mm square area inside the box and the board is 500mm square, so plenty of room for minis and heaps of clearance for the protective box (nothing worse than the protective covering damaging your work!).

I feel this is all coming closer to completion now and I'm quite excited, it looks great and should be a blast to play on. I'm also starting to paint my first band, themed towards greenskins as I love all your green skinned fiends! Starting with the Goblin Hero but I'll certainly get both orcs as well and maybe the goblin king... I'll post some WIP shots of the Goblin as soon as I can take some decent pictures of the little fella, sneaky git keeps running away from the camera...

Next job, sanding / puttying the lid base for the arena and sealing it and the arena itself to make both more resilient, then I'll join them and work on the deeper box to enclose the lot, oh and get the fittings to bring it all together...

It definitely looks great! The floor and pit textures are really nice to look at (love the pits!) and the stairs to enter the arena are totally cool!

Being able to keep your minis, dice, ... together with the arena sounds like a great and very well thought option.

You say nothing about painting it. Won't you paint it?

If you can catch the bloody goblin make sure to take pics of it!

Really looking forward to next update!