http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat1300031&prodId=prod730814

Peekaboo.

Right, the Citadel Realm of Battle Gaming Board. I've got some questions, and I didn't find a topic here about the board, perhaps there's one under some other scary topic, but I couldn't find any, so I start here.

Firstly, there are 6 board pieces, each being 2' by 2', for those who use the meteric system, I've got a translation: 2' = 60 cm roughly (60,9 or something like that I think.. )

So the entire board put together is 120x180cm, and can be put together either as a hill in the middle, or as a valley with half-hills on the sides.

Now, to my question..s...

How large is the area on the top of the hill when put together with a hill in the middle? I tried to see on the pictures, but it's a bit too.... hard.

The craters on the field seems to be for 40K, how do they look in LotR or WH fantasy? Is it something in need to be filled with putty or something?

how high are the hills?

Well, there it is.

- Nurin.

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Gold, silver, mithril.. You call that stuff treassure? Copper is the real deal!

well, it aren't craters, it are holes in the ground filled with skulls...

don't know about the size though

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Everything that has a beginning has an end
There are neither beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time

I think it was on the TLA website, someone modded the board to be used for LOTR. They filled in the openings with the skulls and resculpted the area to look like its surroundings. I thought it looked spot on.

Would like to pick one of these sets up, but I think I will have more fun making one myself.

My local club has six of these sets. Yes, SIX. That's because my local store couldn't sell them. They swindled the club into buying them. One would have been ok maybe two but SIX? The club is now in debt to the store. Nice.

On to the board. I hate them. They are not very modular in the sense they should be, the terrain after time gets very boring and frankly everyone has lost interest in playing on them.

The holes with the skulls look stupid and certainly not LoTR ish. Not anything ish in fact.

You would be better off buying mdf flock and buildings and such to make your own.

I have a 4x6 at home plus several shelves of terrain and it was all less than the plastic boards alone.

And guess what? The Realm of Battle board isn't a free standing table. It doesn't have legs. You still need a table to put it on.

Full circle.

For me the Realm of Battle boards get a big two thumbs down!

'kay.. 6 are quite too many for a store to buy in, aye.

Well, the skull-cracks can be filled... But yeah, I assume that it'll be rather dull after a while to have the hills on same place all the time, and if I'm to flock and paint it, it'll be rather hard to make it possible to re-arange into a valley, if it's painted to fit when it's a hill, unless I only use a single color all over it.

But as I said, I've got very, very limited space here..

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Gold, silver, mithril.. You call that stuff treassure? Copper is the real deal!

Well I purchased mine (as mentioned in the thread below) because I a: don't have very much space and b: I am trying to sell my house and a move to a smaller apartment is imminent. I wanted something that was sturdy enough to move, light enough to transport and collapsible. I could make a nice game board with MDF or plywood, plaster and styrofoam, but the result would be very heavy and oddly breakable.

Having looked at the various pictures and articles, it seems to me, in true GW style, that you get the most utility out of the board if you mate it with scenery such as the modular gaming hills.

Comme ca:
http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_Cus ... 73x627.jpg

Throw in things like other hills, tree bases and so forth and you could probably get about a dozen reasonable configurations for basic gaming. Not as good as making a dedicated board for each, but still pretty good.

I'm somewhat interested to see if they come out with further extension pieces (such as river features).

Gavin

Vaguely wondering where northfarthing is located. Might be vaguely interested in buying a second realm of battle later in the year.

I was wondering the same thing as Aelfwine. Maybe the two of us could defray your club's debt burden.

Yes, GW boards are pricey, but in terms of storage foot print (2'x2'x1'), durability (my friend's foam War Zone table top didn't last a year) and versatility it's hard to beat. That is unless you're an ace terrain builder, have access to reasonably priced blue/pink foam boards and have a fair amount of space to store them.

So, Northfarthing, does your club want to do a little horse-trading?

Well, the thing arrived on New Year's Eve.

I had about a half hour to spare, so I undercoated one of the pieces with the last of my other cheapo black undercoat spray. Remarkably, this did not damage the board (the spray has eaten some GW plastics alive). So that's good.

I also used a goopy mix of PVA glue and water to slime up the craters-with-the-skulls then dumped sand and some Woodland Scenics ballast into the goop. It covers up the pits-with-skulls rather well. Last night after getting home, I undercoated a second piece. I am going to do four to start, and leave the two "flat" pieces for the future.

I do note that there's about four or five potential configuration of the board (all visible on the GW website) and customisation beyond that requires extra scenery. The old "green" GW gaming hills all fit on the board pretty well. However it's pretty obvious that I am going to have to use a lot of matching green static grass to let them blend in.

Currently the plan is to paint the piece with a dark brown colour, drybrushing up to something a bit more stony or sandy and paint the hills in a rocky grey. The flat areas will have expanses of grass (make good use of that bag of static grass I've been very slowly working through for nearly 4 years) to the "green" gaming hills won't stick out too much. Later I'll buy more "burnt" grass and use it on both the board and the "green" hills and any future GW modular hills I might purchase to give everything an autumnal look.

Anyway, the board is my painting project for the next few days before I go back to my Rohirrim and Dwarves and so forth.

Gavin

I will upload photos and make a work in progress, soon as they are all undercoated.