Gladiator arena (54mm) - WIP 1

Aaaaaaaand made it - summer holidays!!!

With great thoughtfulness, Mrs Rab took the Rablings away last night so that my first evening and morning after a crushingly long and busy term was utterly my own. I was going to start on this last night but had a couple of ales more than usual while having a very pleasant chat in my local with a good colleague and his wife - any geeking would have been a total bodge job. So this morning, with a slightly muzzy head, I got out my Stuff to put together a suitable arena for my newly arrived and very lovely (and accurate, hurrah!) Alpha Forge gladiators. They're BIG - 54mm, and by far the largest figures I've attempted. I'm hoping to get results at least a fraction as good as these fabulous examples from Carmen's Painty Fun Time:

It's because of this picture, and the others on his blog that I went for the Alpha Forge figures - lovely!

I'm still waiting on a pack of lipped bases of a suitable size to drop through my letterbox, so the arena comes first.

That chap I was drinking with? I made this on his machine. 52mm hexes with a 2mm gap between them.

After sealing the whole board with watered down pva to stop the mdf drinking all the paint, I treated each hex like a miniature's base and covered it in pva...

... then sand

Once dry, I painted the whole thing apart from where the stands will go in a mix of a "sand" craft paint and a "velvet truffle 3" tester pot from Homebase

A heavy drybrush of Foundry Base Sand (10A)

The Rablings arrived back at this stage and helped (no, really - little boys are great at random drybrushing for terrain!) with further highlights. Mini-Rab #1 even neatened up around the outermost hexes.

... then wotked up through the 10B and 10C shades, topped off with that "sand" craft paint which is almost white, and the lines between each hex redone with the background colour

Finally, a mock up of the whole thing. The stands will be painted and the box will be replaced with a scratchbuilt Editor's box. I'll also seal off the entrances of the two outermost stands and make portcullis-style gates for the other two.

And now it is late, so good night and happy geeking,
Rab