Basing a Playmobil Colesium, Part I

 

normally they look like this

     A little while back my good friend Kev (of Zodani Commando fame)  told me that he had seen a great looking gladiator game that used the Playmobil Coliseum as a playing space. He showed me photos of the game that he had seen at Adepticon that looked great. He told me that he had ordered the coliseum and asked if I would be interested in building a base for it. Kev is a really cool guy and I love a terrain project so I said yes. Today he dropped it off and I got started as soon as I got home.

 

a photo of the game that inspired all this....

 

the thing is rather large, the base I'm building is going to be 36" x 42" to allow for playing aids to be used outside the playing surface, can't have dice knocking down the pretty figures

 

I scrounged Scrabble trays to hold up the character cards and marking pen that the game uses

 

the arena floor has two spike pits and a larger hole that lions

 (tigers and bears?) can  be released from

 

a chunk of blue board this size would not survive much handling without damage

 so I built a wooden frame to protect the base

 

double-checking to be sure I got my measurements right before I started gluing and nailing 

(notice the hexagonal tower pouting in the background)

 

the first layer of blue board in place 

(the hexagon tower is now sulking in the corner)

 

with a second layer on top of that I have enough depth for the pits to contain the hazards,

the wooden sides are just high enough to allow the players to roll dice in the corners outside the arena to avoid damage or disturbance to the models being used

 

with those issues sorted out I took out the blue board and put a coat of stain on the frame, 

tomorrow we start with a gloss-coat and then gluing the blue board in place