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Hey there!

Ive always been a person for creating my own game boards which have been ok, but I havent yet had the resources or time to do something amazing.

Does anyone have a realm of battle game board? I was looking at them and they look damn nice but I would be scared of being generic or loosing out in the fun of making my own, (even tho Ive already made my own and still have it).

Do you think it would be worth the money in my situation?

I can't think that it's worth money to anyone. It's just a load of plastic pieces that clip together. Anyone could do similar with some polystyrene foam and a little effort and spend the massive saving on actual models.

Our group owns one. A bunch of people pitched in and I was the one to paint it. If you're lazy with a lot of money (or can get a bunch of people to pull the cost ) then the gameboard is worth it, otherwise I'd just recommend you build your own. Some form and plywood would come out to about $50 per board, same size, more customization.

(of course if you don't own power tools or a hot wire foam cutter it comes out to more, once)

Howard A Treesong wrote:I can't think that it's worth money to anyone. It's just a load of plastic pieces that clip together. Anyone could do similar with some polystyrene foam and a little effort and spend the massive saving on actual models.

Unfortunately some of us do not possess the time or artistic creativity necessary to make their own board.

Personally, I love my board. With the closest GW to me closing in a month and the weather being too crappy then to travel to the next closest GW, we can all just gather at my place for a day of 40k. Sure beats having to shell out for fast food when I can just make food while I'm not playing.

I own one of these also..

And I did think about making one on my own.. but in my case, I just wanted to have something ready to go.

..call it lazy, I guess..

I'd almost go as far to say it’s just as simple to build your own board as the realm of battle one.

Step 1;

Go to the following link (http://new.panelsystems.co.uk/newsc/index.pl?c=Craftfoam&p=265&a=i) and buy the box of 12 green 600x600x25. 6 of these will make you a 6x4 board, and if you want to use the other 6 you can get two boards worth (6x4) or three 4x4 boards.

Step 2;
Go to your local DIY or hobby shop. pick up a tub of PVA glue, a brush and some paint (Yellow for desert + sand, green for grasslands + flock or grey for city) coat the foam so it is sealed and sprinkle on flock or sand whilst wet. Leave to dry, recoat with watered down PVA glue. If doing city boards then two coats of grey paint (I found masonry paint is perfect and washes off brushes easily).

Step 3;

add any details you want. Also if you want pick up three 2foot x4 foot MDF boards like I did, add a small edging around the board and you can paint the board green, use one set of 6 tiles as desert, and 1 set of 6 tiles as a city, because they are 6x4 total they fit on top of the board and the edging holds them perfectly in place.

You now own an easy to put away gaming table which has three... Yes THREE different landscapes to fight on.

For roughly £70ish

Now, head to eBay, buy some resin rocks for rock outcrops and some model railroad trees, I found a set for 25 for a few quid. Buy them, and if you want some more foam, carve foam into hills, buildings, and base the trees on some thin MDF (Few £ in DIY store for huge board... perfect for basing trees and buildings on). paint with cheap acrylics and there you go. you now own terrain for deserts (rock outcrops and such) grasslands (forests and hills) and cities (walls an building ruins... if you throw in some foam board its even easier)

Total cost for all this is about £50 max and much less if you spend more than a few mins looking.

So what do we have now.

Say 3 nights or a weekend of building (Simple paint this flock that... it’s not hard so no one has an excuse since you would do it for the realm of battle board anyways!!) and you get the following

3 boards 6x4 which are easily storable (I admit a bit more storage than the Realm of battle board but its sill easily hidden under a bed or corner. so no one can claim it’s too much) and enough terrain for all three boards to make fun battlefields.

all for under the cost of one realm of battle board.

add in http://www.amazon.co.uk/Folding-Table-Trestle-6ft-DIY/dp/B000ZJ2TWS/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=kitchen&qid=1250076736&sr=8-4 if you had the room and no tables already and boom, three fully functioning gaming tables (This would work really well for club's since they would be the ones needing tables to put the boards on).

So what have we learnt... spend two days (Don't be lazy, it can be done over a week or two weeks... claiming you can’t do DIY boards is a lie. Anyone can since it’s the same thing you'd be doing to the realm of battle board) and you can build three times as much along with loads of terrain, for roughly £20 or more under the GW board cost. and that £20? buy a bottle of whiskey or some beers and a pizza and play on your new board!!!

Boom you have succeeded in making a terrain board. You have unlocked some new achievements:

-Made own board
-Gave GW expensive stupid hills already in place board the fingers
-Saved money for snacks
-Shown girls you are good with your hands (Don't flock them!! they don’t like that)


Duce tutorial done.

Bunker wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:I can't think that it's worth money to anyone. It's just a load of plastic pieces that clip together. Anyone could do similar with some polystyrene foam and a little effort and spend the massive saving on actual models.

Unfortunately some of us do not possess the time or artistic creativity necessary to make their own board.

It doesn't have to be anything fancy and you still have to paint the GW gameboard. Still, you could buy a layout cheaper from other suppliers. I've been to wargames shows where companies specifically make and sell modular game boards, so I'm sure they are online. They sell the polystyrene squares individually and you can pick from flat pieces or ones with roads and rivers cut in, or hills and various other fancy pieces. You could buy a board twice the size of the one from GW and have it already painted and flocked. The only advantage of the GW one is that it comes with a system to clip it together.

I like mine and shall forever carry that knowledge as a social stigmata when people ask about it.

I cant stand the sound of dice hitting the GW gameboard....

Its too "clacky".

R3con wrote:I cant stand the sound of dice hitting the GW gameboard....

Its too "clacky".

You roll dice on the board?

I go for the box approach to avoid arguments i.e. all dice must land flat in the box to be counted. It has a nice sound too

I got one of the GW boards last christmas, I'd never have got one myself purely because it costs so much. That said, now I have it I think its great. Its easy to store and looks far better than any of my previous attempts to make a board myself.

I'd say it was a very worthwhile investment, if you didn't have to shell out all of the money for it yourself. sharing the cost between a couple of the people you regularly game with makes it definitely worth the money.

I have one but would only recommend it if: 1) you have the cash to burn 2) you have limited time 3) you are not the best at home-brewing terrain and models.

Flashman wrote:

R3con wrote:I cant stand the sound of dice hitting the GW gameboard....

Its too "clacky".

You roll dice on the board?

I go for the box approach to avoid arguments i.e. all dice must land flat in the box to be counted. It has a nice sound too

But then you don't get to say "Your unit suffers d6 hits!" or "Your model suffers a d6 strength hit!" when the dice 'accidentally' tumbles through a squad.

I don't really like the idea of having the board visibly cut into 6 squares. Seems like too much of a reminder of measurements to get into the game properly.

Howard A Treesong wrote:

Bunker wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:I can't think that it's worth money to anyone. It's just a load of plastic pieces that clip together. Anyone could do similar with some polystyrene foam and a little effort and spend the massive saving on actual models.

Unfortunately some of us do not possess the time or artistic creativity necessary to make their own board.

It doesn't have to be anything fancy and you still have to paint the GW gameboard.

No I didn't. All the GWs in my area offer free painting if you buy the board

This product has mixed reviews, all of them one extreme or the other.

I personally love my RoBG and think it is one of the best product releases GW has ever had evAr. If you can spare the cash then I say get it. You wont regret it.

Here's mine...
http://pitoftheoni.blogspot.com/2009/03/realm-of-battle-gameboard-final.html

TBH I think it's a good buy. Get the 6x4 board, the 2 extra boards, the board painting set . . . hire the kids out for the weekend and you have a fully functional board that looks awesome, had minimal effort, packs into the corner, and is useful for beating the kids with when they complain about not being paid for the work =D

*No children where hurt in the making of this post*

So duce if its that easy when you inviting me down for a game

(Mine is a southern comfort).

R3con wrote:I cant stand the sound of dice hitting the GW gameboard....

Its too "clacky".

I hate it when people roll on there too, but not because of the sound - because they'll chip the paintjob I slaved 3-4 hours doing for their ungrateful asses

I own one because I knew I'd be moving to a place that has no gaming stores. So now my stepson and wife and I can play at our own pace, and our own leisure.

It has molded on hills and skull pits. No thanks.

I have a sheet of wood spraypainted that I put my own terrain on, it works fine and cost me about 20 euro, including the spraypaint.

I know the user 'Panic' is a big fan of the Realm of Battle board. He has an article on how to flock it:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Terrain:%20GW%20Realm%20Of%20Battle%20Board:%20Standard

As well as a host of battle reports, may of which use it:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/PaniCs_Battle_REports


Although I don't own it because I already have an old set of modular foam terrain I bought long ago, I totally would buy it if I didn't have that already.

It may be relatively easy to create your own table, I just think that the overall look of the Realm of Battle board ends up being better than 90% of the custom tables most people make. Yes, really good tables are much, much better, but your standard custom table that most people make usually ends up looking a little too much like it was homemade and not very cool (YMMV, of course).

Newt-Of-Death wrote:Ive always been a person for creating my own game boards which have been ok...

That's reason enough not to buy it.

A). It costs an arm and a leg and then your other leg.
B). There's nothing creative about it - it's a set board, it will always be the same, that hill will always be that hill.
C). It is limiting in what you can do with it.
D). Did I mention the cost?

For the money you'd spent on the Lack of Imagination Battle Board, you could build a couple of your own boards, to your spec, with terrain, in whatever manner you wanted. And you'd feel better about it afterwards as well, as it's something you made, rather than paying a life-time's worth of money to GW for 6 plastic board pieces.

Velsharoon wrote:So duce if its that easy when you inviting me down for a game

(Mine is a southern comfort).

Soon as its in my apartment which i'm waiting on being completed

Also you'lls ee pics of the 4 boards on TTN when i post pics took of them all.

Mines a whiskey

It's a damned more resilient than any home attempt would be. Sure, it's pricey, but then ideally, you only need to buy one for your gaming needs. And that's in your lifetime.

And H.B.M.C. I know not mindlessly towing your line makes me the anti-christ on Dakka, but £150? Lifetime's amount of money? You sir need a new job.

As with every single other GW product. If you think you can do better yourself, or buy better elsewhere, do so. Don't criticise it just for criticisms sake, it's a waste of time.

I am certainly not a prosyltizer for the board. I'm not going to buy multiples of them. But remember, time=money. I was going to make one of those bad-ass lava boards as described in the tutorial forum but compelling engagments demanded my attention. I wanted a gaming board and didn't havae the time to make one. Voila. In billable hours I saved myself thousands of dollars by purchasing the board rather than making one of my own. Beside, I actually like the hills.

but to buy the board you still have to paint and flock it. the same amount of time needed for painting and flocking a mdf board. and the hills aren't in the same places.

Yeah its got the details but for the cost you could get nice terrain to put on the mdf board.

I'm not being rude. just don't get how people claim buying the board is better timewise or DIY wise than doing a mdf one. drive to place, but board or mdf and paint, drive home, paint. Its the same timewise and costs almost nothing.

For the amount of detail on the RoB board, as long as you like the skulls etc, it looks like okay-ish value...

Sheet of 18mm 8'x4' plus cuts at B&Q - under £20
HUGE load of pink insulation foam - £15 (?)
Large Tub of PVA glue - £10
Large Bag of Sand - £2.20
3 tubs of emulsion mixed up to match Bestial Brown, Vomit Brown and Vomit Brown/Skull White - £30
Some dowelling rod - £3

With lots of materials left over, that will add up to under £85, all in.

Now, additionally,
Power Drill - £100+ pounds, but admittedly I needed one anyway...
Router - £30 (cheapest model I could find, but does the job)
Brushes - £5
Proper hotknife - £60+
Homemade hotwire - £10 ish

Versus RoB being £150 before you even have any paint on it...

Personally, I'd preferred making my own, but I don't think RoB is a BAD idea...

I equate the Realm of Battle Board vs DIY Board to a matter of GW vs Forgeworld. Is forgeworld necessary: no, but man do they make some sweet models and your going to pay for the time and effort them company spend on each resin models.

Is a Realm of Battle Board neccessary: no its not. However, some people don't like playing on a floor, the board is easy to use, and frankly some people would rather spend their time gaming, or spending time with family friends instead of making a DIY board.

Both have positives. I think a DIY board is something to be proud of. Its a great way to get family who don't game involved in making something IE kids, wives, etc. However, some people do not have the tools/ availability of items required to make one.

Look at the financial end: If I don't have a shop willing to precut the supplies nearby, if I don't have a hobby store with railroad supplies, and if I have to buy everything at cost what do I do if I really want a board:

Realm of Battle: got to the store, buy it, its doesn't require paint/ flocking, its really by choice. Bought, placed on table, ready to game!

DIY Board: (NOTE: if you don't have access to materials). By the flat board, by the foam, flocking materials, drill, saw, find somewhere in my house or apartment to build it. Actually do it. It could actually be more expensive...

I've found that foam boards can really take a beating.

I recently acquired a RoB, and will begin work on it shortly, the biggest factor included in my decision was space.

She Who Shall Be Obeyed did not grant me a lot of room for gaming and hobbying, and if I am going to host a game then I'll be moving boards and stuff in between rooms, A RoB just moves easier.
Not thrilled with the static hills, but will be supplemented with other modualr terrain.

I like it fine... but not for the price. At a certain point I'd rather build than buy. At $25 for a ruined building, I'll buy it. At $275 for a board, I'll build it.