From ByronM: Last post of the year - Gladiator Coliseum (120 points)

Welcome to my last post of the year.  This is a project that I have been working on for a while, and while not completely finished, the hardest part is, and I wanted to show it off this year.

The project started last year when I was out visiting Curt, and was teaching him how to play Arena Rex.  After the game, he disappeared into his storage room of shame, and emerged with a play mobile coliseum and asked if that would work for enhancing games.  Certainly, I said and then started imagining pits and traps like a real coliseum would have.

So, while I still have plans to paint the coliseum, and therefore this project is not yet done, I have mainly finished the terrain for this.  My idea came to life while talking about doing pits and and therefore a box for it all to fit in, when my son suggested he make the box from drawer sides and that I laser engrave a pattern on it.  What an idea!!!  So, Riley went off to work (he works at a cabinetry shop here in Winnipeg) and came home with some beautifully done sides with dovetails to fit them together.

I then took them to my shop (Northern Lights Terrain) and engraved a Greek / Roman pattern in them.  Riley then took them back to work, clear coated them and assembled the box with a bottom for me.  I think it came out PERFECT!  Riley did a great job at it for me, THANKS!

Next up was a lot of 3d design work trying to figure out the best way to layout some pits and traps for the board and how to put the tops on and make them easy to remove.  Also planing out how to keep the coliseum attached while playing but easy to remove for storage.

Here is the 3d model of the plan, with all the sub components and parts showing up.  Note: I only modeled one of each size of box, as I saw no reason to do more work than required as I would just cut multiples of each.

After some test cuts for size, it was onto assembly.

To attach the coliseum I embedded 8 magnets (2 in each corner) that will hold the corner pieces in place (I know that technically it is a circle and therefor has no corners, but 4 of the pieces got magnets epoxied into them to lineup where they fall above the board and it all holds in place).  Overall it works really well.

I also put magnets under each trap door, so that they are easy to pickup and remove for game play at any point by just passing another magnet over it.

Once it was all assembled, I covered the top in sand and started painting it up in a deliberately patchy manner so that it doesn't look too even.

Still to go are creating inserts for the pits that will have either spike traps, water features, bodies, snakes,  animal cages, and more.  Also since the tops of each pit can come off, I have plans to make even more of them with terrain directly on them, and I can sub them into the board at any point in time.

I wanted to get the coliseum painted for the challenge and be able to show it off completely done, but time has conspired against me.  Hopefully you all like what is done so far, and I will show it off in all it's finished glory next year.  But I can at least show off the finished base now and collect some points for it, as technically the board is now done.  It's just the coliseum and extra terrain that needs to be finished up.

As for points, I am not sure what is fair.  Size wise it is 3' x 3' x 4" deep, so equal to 24 cubes!  But that is way to much for what was fairly easy to do... I mean all I (and Riley) did was to make a box, engrave that box, then design and cut some small boxes as pits, then sand and paint the whole thing.

I will be happy with whatever I am awarded for points, so no worries. 


That baseboard (with pits) for the Coliseum looks brilliant - great work by you and Riley with the woodwork.  

As for scoring, I do recall pointing out to Curt that for essentially 2D items like baseboards some unscrupulous challenger - No! No! No pointing fingers at Ray - he just drops sandbags on us - might "game" the terrain cube system by making them on 4" thick foam. Curt told us to play it by ear, so that's what I'll do.

I'm not sure what the volume of the pits comes out as, but I think it would be fair overall to score it by the area and a putative 1" depth, which comes out as 6 terrain cubes for 120 points.