Twilight Struggle

I just played my first game of Twilight Struggle. Best Boardgame I've played all year. It's 2 player, USA vs USSR during the Cold War. In your turn you play event cards that are real events that happened during the Cold War. Sometimes they are good for you, and sometimes they are bad as you try to influence other countries into your sphere of control. If you trigger WWIII you lose.

In our game, on our third turn, we both had cards if not played carefully would have triggered the war. The world hung on a knife's edge for that turn.

I'm of a certain age, that I remember a lot of those events or some of those events were recent history and they still reverberate in today's world. This is one game for the boardgame library.

Xin

Scratch built Mausoleum

I recently ran a large 8 player game of Frostgrave at Fall In 2016. I used about 90% of the same terrain I did last time at Cold Wars 2016. I did add some new pieces and one was this mausoleum.

Renedra made some stone floor plastic pieces which I think are the base for there towers. I thought they would be great for ruins or village cotteges. I bought a few packs.

I used MS Publisher to draw a template for the walls

I used Elmers glue stick to glue the template to foamcore that I had stripped the paper off of.

Once cut out the template is easy to peel off the foamcore. I made 2 templates with different sized arches to get inset windows and doorway. I used a low temp hot glue gun to glue the 2 walls together.

Test fit with figure for scale

Here you can see the Renedra floor sections. I glued 2 sections to one piece of foamcore and used a ball point pen to score the stone work.

I made double thick walls of foamcore.  

Using a ball point pen I scored in the stone work.

All glued together. I used a tin foil ball to scuff up the inside walls to add texture.

The roof is made of Foamcore and pink insulation. Again scoring with a pen. The skull is a halloween plastic ring, sold at dollar stores.

As I was using this piece to enlarge a graveyard, that was mostly GW's Garden of Morr, I used those pieces as inspiration for style. Torches are from a Kickstarter,

Large spikes are bamboo skewers and small spikes are spear tips from GW's State Troop box set.

I finished painting the this piece on the morning we were heading to Fall In. Didn't get any pictures of painting it, other than the partial coat above. Also not finished was the interior. I would use as is, but I brought along a crafting kit box to finish the interior if I had time at the convention.

 Here I set up a crafting table in the hotel room at the convention.

The interior of the Mausoleum are open crypt niches with skeletons. I had these pieces I got off ebay year or more ago sitting around doing nothing. So I cut foamcore sides and hot glued them into the niche shelves that will get mounted inside the building. Again, no more pics as I had to set up the game in about an hour so was rushing.

Here is the finished Graveyard with Mausoleum. Gate, statue, and smaller crypts are from Games Workshop. Sarcophagus are from Reaper Bones. Metal fencing from Dept 56 found at garage sale. Green Led tea Lights from Amazon.

Completed building and on the game table.

I was "just" happy with the Mausoleum when I finished it at home. When I got the time to add the crypt niches in the hotel, that sent the piece over the top for me.   It was a fun build, and I will use it as a stepping stone for more foamcore buildings. I'll make a post about the game in a few days.

Cheers, Xin/Jeff