Games and Gears
www.gamesandgears.co.uk
For quite a while, my friends and I have been taking part in a series of games based within urban environments. This has meant using various methods to try to represent modern roads, shops and other buildings. We’ve been quite successful but using grey felt and painted areas of wallpaper doesn’t quite feel ‘modern’ enough. And that’s where these Battle Boards come in.
The standard Hawk set produced by Games and Gears consists of six 2’ by 2’ boards, which provides enough to make a 6’ by 4’ layout. They are perhaps most suitable for 28mm sized figures but could work well for 20mm and even 15mm, if you were aiming to represent a major city with wide thoroughfares. These are robust, molded plastic boards which have both roads and areas of square and rectangular ‘paving’ already marked upon them. The roads already have suitably generic markings upon them and the whole thing can be used straight out of the box or painted and shaded as required. The boards can be placed together in a number of options and are secured using specially molded clips that hold the boards together during gaming.
As these are generic boards, they can be used for almost any urban environment in the world. The road markings mean that they are perhaps most suitable for games set from the 1960’s onwards, depending upon the location your game is set in. Equally, they can also be used for sci-fi gaming. All one has to do is find suitable buildings, perhaps add the right paintjob and then the little ‘extras’ that evoke your target period, the ‘urban clutter’ that one finds in any city. By adding scatter materials such as sand or snow, you can theme the season and setting, then tip the board up and pour the scatter into a container to re-use it.
These boards are full of potential and are a great addition to the market. Next time I want to fight a battle within an urban setting, I’ll dig these out, decide on my layout, add buildings and extras and get straight to the battle!