Ye Olde Inn

by **Harry** » Monday April 20th, 2015 8:26am

Not sure if this is in the right place .... you do not seem to have a place for ongoing projects?
Please move this if you think there is a better spot for it.

Hi all,

My name is Harry. I am Harry on Warseer and the Oldhammer Forum.
With the HeroQuest Anniversary last year and the Twisting catacombs Kickstarter just around the corner ... I decided it was time to give HeroQuest the attention it deserves.
I have posted this elsewhere but I thought I would sign up here to share my efforts with you guys.

All the best,
Harry

At Oldhammer Day 2014 a very fine fellow indeed turned up with the most beautiful homemade HeroQuest set.
At the heart of this was a 3D board. It was quite something ... not made with Hirst art blocks ... this one was laser cut. It was somehow made by taking a photograph of the board and then clearly some sort of magic was involved ....

Anyway ... I managed to get him to make another one and with the promise of a night of mad passion with my sister ... it was mine.

I had always fancied a 3D board but all that mucking about and expense with Hirst art blocks was more trouble than I could face ..... but this was ready to go ... it just needed a paint job.

... and here it is (Undercoated):

Those of you who know this board well will see that it is not quite a HeroQuest board .... very subtly different here and there and the key differences are that the squares a bit bigger ... perfect for a 25mm base and the corridor around the edge is a double square instead of a single ... (which are the two things I would have done to improve the HeroQuest board) ... oh, and the rooms are upside down.This was done so that the rooms were the right way up for the GM but the spaces for the card decks were in front of the players.

I have spent a long time looking at it trying to decide exactly what i wanted to do with it. I was really keen to do it in the style of some of GW's old floor plans but much as I tried I just couldn't help myself .... I had to paint it as a Heroquest board.

However, I always found the original a bit .... Bright. So I just tried to paint it 'toned down' a bit...a bit more 'natural. So it is still a HeroQuest board just a bit 'softer' ... a bit 'quieter'.

Anyway I found myself with a weekend with not much on ... so in between family stuff ... Here is where I am after a two days painting ... still loads to do .... got to finish painting the corridors and then add all the 3D stones and bones and blood splatters etc that detail the original. I also have to finish the gold trim ... several highlights to go. i confess I am still not sure i have gone the right way with this. I keep thinking i should have stuck to the stone greys of the original board ... I just thought the gold might make it look a bit ...posh.

Here are some close ups of the rooms with the board on top ... so you can see the the slightly more 'toned down' effect I have gone for ... you will see my blue/greys are not quite so blue and my yellow/browns are not quite so yellow ... the red/browns not so red.

Ok, I want one now!

As for the magic part... I would have taken the original pic/scan into photo shop and made it grey scale/black and white then I could use this as an alpha depth map in a 3D program, White being high areas and black being the lowest areas. Piff paff poff, a little bit more techno magic and the board would be ready for laser cutting. If I could find some where that didn't charge the earth to do it, I so would!

Thanks for the post, now I have something else to covet!

by **ampersand** » Monday April 20th, 2015 8:53am

very nice. i guess a lot of laser cutting is being used now to make various scenery i guess it was only a matter of time before we saw something HQ based.
very nicely done and subtly brilliant

by **knightkrawler** » Monday April 20th, 2015 9:42am

Saw this over at Old Scratch's...
Nice. Very nice. I like your choice of the double-wide hallway. I did this, too.
by the way, could someone make a tile for covering up the outer squares? Something like a 8-square long and a 3-square long blocked square or just plain black or dark grey?

by **Harry** » Monday April 20th, 2015 12:27pm

@Tott
Thanks very much.
Not that much ... we had agreed a figure of £20 I think (That may have been a mates rate .... but in the end I traded a bunch of stuff from my big bag of trades for this so ... 'twas a bargain.
No sisters were hurt in the making of this board.

@Baylore
Yes that sounds about right.
In addition he had to do some more magic to loose the bones and rocks and stuff and the shadow that would have spoiled the flooring.
I think he had to do a fair bit of swapping individual tiles to change these but did it in such a way that you don't notice at a glance.
I then painted the shadow back into the rooms.

I will suggest to him that he might be able to shift a few. :shifty:

@ampersand.
Yes ... and this is perfect for it. The texture that was achieved with the laser cutting made this a dream for dry brushing.
...and thanks very much.

@knightkrawler
Thanks very much.
The decisions about the board were not mine however ... they were the guy that made it who deserves most of the credit for this ... I just threw some paint at it.

by **Baylor_OgreBane** » Monday April 20th, 2015 1:01pm

I NEED A LASER CUTTER!!!!!!

by **Andy P** » Monday April 20th, 2015 4:53pm

OOOOOOOOOOOOOH. I need one of those boards.

by **Diggin** » Monday April 20th, 2015 5:33pm

Very nice board Harry. i think the wider hallways are a great improvement. I think the slightly larger tiles make it a perfect fit for adding Warhammer Quest tiles

Harry wrote:The decisions about the board were not mine however ... they were the guy that made it who deserves most of the credit for this ... I just threw some paint at it.

Go ahead and credit him then |_P