In 2006 my love of gaming and modeling was back in full swing. I found the website: BoardgameGeek.com and I haven't looked back. That site became my go-to source for painting ideas, hobby ideas and alternative rules for all the games I owned or planned on owning. Somehow and somewhere through the BoardgameGeek website I found a German's blog. I couldn't read this man's blog but the pictures made my jaw drop. Nowadays you have the ability to use Google translate to convert this blog from German to English (or whichever language you choose).
This man made a custom HeroQuest game board. I was amazed. I had to have one. The only way I knew I could get one was to make it. The most intriguing thing to me about his custom board was how he hollowed out the bottoms of the doors so they could rest on top of the balsa wood room walls. This was a fantastic idea, no more worries about the game's doors sliding all over the game board. I simply needed to have one of these boards. This man included photos on his blog showing exactly how he went about creating this masterpiece.
Lucky enough for me, I had a very quiet second job during the evenings at this time. This board requires numerous square inch pieces of cork board. I was able to sit at my second job and cut all of these pieces and get them ready.
Here is a photo of my completed board. I completed this project in 2006.
The balsa wood inserts for the room dividers was an excellent idea for placing the doors.
My absolute favorite part of this project was carving the room tile patterns and then painting them.
The dimensions of the main room and 2 of the hallways is off when compared to the original board. This was done to make things more symmetrical and easier to build. I haven't noticed it to be a problem during game play.
Here is a comparison of all four quadrants of rooms between the original game board and my custom board.
I decided to simply use a standard, lightweight drawing board as my base. I didn't want to cut the board down to size and I am glad I didn't. Since the board was longer than it needed to be it left extra space for storing the gaming cards or it has also acted as a miniature staging area. Sometimes I've used it to store all of the deceased monsters from the quest. Kind of like a hunters trophy room.
These photos demonstrate how the pieces fit and look on this custom board. It is a real joy to play HeroQuest using this game board. I am sure glad and relieved I was able to construct this project. It is one of my prized possessions.
These were the first gaming miniatures I ever painted. I would estimate that I painted them back in '92 or '93. I am currently working on painting a new set of Heros that I obtained when I purchased the UK version of HeroQuest. I purchased another set because I didn't want to carve the door frames on my original set. I am also keeping the original paint job I did back in the '90s. I will eventually paint the miniatures that came with the UK version of the game. Let's see which ones you like better once I am done.
The Frozen Horror wanted to say Goodbye and ask you to leave comments letting him know what you think of this project.
Love it!!
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