Is it their colours? Their fans? The often-pummelled mascot?
Of course not, it's the stadium!
Where else can an overweight goblin in a filthy apron sell suspicious hotdogs at premium prices? You can invite your enemies over to play and smash their faces into the astrogranite knowing that when you come back tomorrow the bloodstains will still be there, a mark of pride and a little piece of home.
With this in mind, I decided a printed paper pitch just wasn't up to par for my teams. No, I wanted them to take to a proper field, made with love and care. Well, foam core board and glue.
I had a plan, but I wanted it done right. I got out my graph paper and did a few sketches to get some idea of dimensions.
Before I went and spent money at Hobbycraft, I wanted to see what it would look like. I had a poke around and discovered Google Sketchup, a free 3d modelling package that was supposedly easy to learn. I like easy things, so I had a play.
Next step was to go and spend some money. Isn't it always?
I came home with a few A1 sheets of card and foam core, some sheets of soft play foam, some glue , a bag of fine sand and a few tins of paint.
First to be constructed was going to be the pitch itself. I had toyed with the idea of a solid sheet with lines drawn, but thought I'd go whole hog and do each square as its own tile, cut from soft foam. I wanted them similar sizes, but with an unevenness to them to simulate hewn slabs of rock. I started cutting.
133 small foam squares later, I realised I had made a stupid choice, but was now committed to it. I cut the card sheet down into two pitch halves and started gluing...
I watered down some glue and layered it in the cracks between the tiles. I covered everything with sand, waited for it to set and then shook off the loose sand. It didn't go quite as I hoped, but it was a nice effect of dirt and gravel between the slabs. I chucked on a layer of spray coat to keep everything in place and started painting.
A few coats of black, then grey, then a wash with watered down black gave me the finish I wanted. I'll give it a drybrush with a lighter gray when it's at final paint stage, but for now it's good enough. I stuck the whole thing onto a sheet of foam core to keep it flat and cut off it down to size.
Now for the base. I wanted a built up area for the dugouts and scoreboard on either side, so I constructed some walls with more foam core and glued it together.
I gave the underside of this a handful of coats of black paint and spray coat to give it a nice robust base. While it was outside drying however, a rogue gust of wind caught it and sent it spiralling across my garden. Luckily the only damage was a crumpled corner, but I was concerned at the lack of weight to my project. Solution? Money!!
A glued layer of 2p pieces gave the base a bit of ballast. I added the pitch area into the middle to cover it all over.
My next steps will be constructing the endzones, the scoring/turn/re-roll area on the right and simulating rough stonework on the walls with polyfilla.
Once that's done I'll get the rest of it painted and detailed.
I'm also planning on putting rules reference sheets on to each end facing the players.
I'm debating on wether or not to put a team logo painted on the centre of the pitch. On the one hand, it will look cool, but if I don't do that then this project isnt just tied to a single team. I shall have to ponder.
See you next time, Blood Bowl fans!
