Game board for 3mm DBA and Old John's Poles finished!

 I have just finished off Old Johns latest box of Poles and very pleased with them I am too (as is OJ of course which is what matters). Once again the satin varnish does it's magic in lifting the colours and especially the horses. Photos are below.

Meantime I have been quietly working on producing a playing board for my DBA games in 3mm scale and finally have some results to share here. I wanted to find a way of producing a truly portable game system, it began with the neat magnetised wooden storage boxes and I wanted a way of making a board that packed down to about the same size! A lot of thinking time went into this idea and I finally came up with using a second hand folding boardgame, the kind that z folds down in 6 or (in this case) 8 sections to fit in a box (or in this case a plastic ziplock bag). I started by covering it with a thin coat of Vallejo Diorama FX lightly textured Earth shade ensuring that it would still fold down when dry which it did. I had then intended to use paint to build up a drybrush finish, but when I did it looked pretty awful so decided to use javis fine grass flock and go for a basic green surface thinking that with wear and tear and a bit of shredding of the surface flock the earth texture would begin to show through here and there. However, the PVA coating seems to have made a very good job of holding the flock and there is very little to shed! I'm not worried at this stage, it's green and that's OK, we shall see how it goes, but bottom line is that I have a nice little board 30" x 20" that I can play some solo games on and fits the truly portable concept that I was so keen to produce. More terrain pieces will follow, maybe lay on fields to break up the greenery and some river sections etc. I'm happy so far!

Here you see a few stages of development and the newly enlarged Macedonian army deployed for action to show scale of everything. I'm starting the Indian army of King Porus next, elephants, 4 horse chariots, cavalry and bow armed infantry. I stumbled across this clip (bottom) on YouTube and like many a war movie it's an inspiring clip of the elephants emerging from the trees to attack the Macedonian phalanx, bit on the gory side though!

Below: Old John's completed Poles!