You have a theme, some beautiful commission painted miniatures, but how can you take it up a notch? Escalate it!

Raise it up! Add some height! Make it MASSIVE! That’s what we did with this one. From the temple buildings to the Baba trees, we pushed the limits of height with this build.

Key Project Requirements

No pastel colours for the lizards Reflect the many battles between the client’s army and his friends – Lizardmen vs. Skaven

Theme

The combination of Aztec and Mayan culture fits so perfectly with this cold reptilian race.

Keeping in mind the history of the Lizardmen, the Skaven have been nothing short of a plague upon their cities and temples. We decided to show this by creating a temple scene where the Lizardman retake a lost city from the Skaven.

The city is unkept and overgrown with foliage from years or decades of neglect. The Skaven desecrated the temples by adding architectural elements of scrap metal and scaffolding to the stone temples and building.

With the theme taken care of we were ready for the build!

Building the Army Display Board

The first thing to do is remember the army you are building the scene for! After assembling, we get a clear count, and can incorporate it into the layout.

Now that we have the army laid out, it’s time for the layout! The layout is a simple drawing designed to focus on the key elements. We aren’t worrying with the details at this point.

At the heart of the design was simple geometric shapes. Scale was next, as these temples would often tower over all other structures.

The Slann priest would be placed at the very top with his guard surrounding him. Below would be the main fighting force starting with the larger Stegadon and Carnosaur creatures followed by the smaller Skinks.

With the layout done, it’s time to see if it translates to reality! We start with the basics again. Simple shapes cut to sit but not refined. We want to get an idea of how it looks before spending too much time.

The easiest thing to forget is that you need to make sure there is room for all the miniatures! In this photo you can see us checking that there is proper space to fit the miniatures as they would actually sit. If they weren’t assembled, you may forget the extra space for those tails!

At the top, we need to make sure the Slann and his guard fit. We start with a simple rough mockup again.

If you’ve checked out the Death Korps of Krieg Display Board then you will remember our use of “trays” to make sure each miniature is built into the terrain. For this set we also wanted to magnetize the miniatures. The next photo shows how we used the trays and a bit of paint to map this out.

We even converted some of the Stegadons to fit into the scene!

We then placed two massive Baba trees in the back to frame everything and add further height adding to the epicness. Those are represented by the blue dots in the original layout.

A bit of paint to get things started. We start simple with one or two colours to get the display board covered, then we add in the different colours after!

Modular Army Display Boards

Once again, we made it modular! Each main terrain element comes off and can double as terrain, while making the display board easier to transport or store.

Escalating your Game ain’t Easy

This board was incredibly difficult and took far longer than the previous Krieg project. At the end of everything, the board stood at over 2 feet tall!

The Baba tree were one of the most more complicated parts to do.

However, as you know, you don’t get great rewards without great effort! The work was tough, but the final was worth it!