Building a Game Board for Drug Wars
This is the plan for the board. It measures 4ft x 4ft and is designed so that each gang will own a corner. The grey is road, the cream is pavement (or sidewalk), the brown are buildings and the green is grass/wasteland which will be home to junked cars, old furniture and the odd tree.
Let's start with the buildings. The four corner buildings are going to be businesses and all the remaining sixteen will be virtually identical two storey houses with flat roofs. Since these make up the majority of the structures I'll tackle them first. These are quick to make and I hope to get at least four made each day. I have streamlined the construction process that I used to make my tenements so that everything proceeds as quickly as possible.
Here are the basic components. The base is 3mm MDF but hardboard is just as good, The only item not shown here is the drop-in roof which we'll get to later. The doors are my standard 30mm x 20mm but the windows are bigger than usual at 20mm square.
Window sills and door frames have been added as usual with matches cut to size. I've also added matches to the inside of the upper walls to support the drop-in roof as you can see in the top right of the picture. These supports are 20mm down from the top of the wall. It is important not to run them to the edge of the walls as they will get in the way of attaching the side walls later if you do.
I've added a 20mm wide strip of card to the bottom edge of the ground floor walls for a bit of detailing and a length of pine trim to the top walls to accent the roof. Everything was stuck in place using wood glue.
The two sections are assembled using super glue. It is best to start with the rear wall on the ground floor so that you get the positioning right and avoid overhanging the base.
The drop-in roof is a square of cork measuring 92mm to a side. I have made a handle from a piece of dowel with a drawing pin stuck into its top. If you leave the top of the drawing pin standing proud from the dowel you have a pretty good rendition of a metal, covered chimney. The placement of the dowel isn't crucial; putting it in a corner will maximise the playing area of the roof of course. I ensured the dowel was really secure by pushing a second drawing pin through from the other side of the roof into the dowel and then soaking everything in super glue.
Having a drop-in roof rather than a separate roof section like the tenement buildings makes for a more stable building and speeds up figure placement during play. It also makes these buildings much quicker to build.
The final touch is the steps. These are made from balsa block cut to size and a matchstick to fill the gap under the door frame. You can see that the rear steps only go down to the level of the base and not the ground. This is because the central area of the board is going to be mounted on 3mm hardboard which will fit underneath them.
That's the first one done, only fifteen more to go. There will be some variation between them but only in superficial detailing like the roof trim.
