"Battlefield in A Box" Topic

Always interested in small scale gaming, especially gaming that is portable, I am back to a project that got put on the back burner over Christmas. I call it "Battlefield in a Box." Essentially it is a slim box that will contain everything you need to play a small game with miniatures.

Step one was to find a suitable box. It needs to open and lay flat so the inside of the box forms the playing surface. I found s perfect one at an artist's supply store, in the "portfolio" section. It measures 16x20x2 closed so gives me a 20x32 playing surface when laid flat.

To start making a playing surface I lined the interior with foam sheets that I had laying around (hence the pink and teal colors). I made it two layers thick so (1) I could build a removable piece for the hinge area and (2) could cut out terrain features like rivers if I wanted to do dedicated boxes. This one will be generic.

Remember to leave a gap so the sides of the bottom will still nest into the top when the lid is closed!

Brill idea. Will you be updating this thread as you progress or do you have a blog to follow please? I play a lot of 10mm WW2 so rather interested in how it goes :-)

Blaxkleric
fantorical.blogspot.co.uk

Mark,

I recognize that type of box! It is made by Hollinger/Metal Edge, an archival supplier. We use these in many shapes and sizes in our archival work. You should be able to search for the manufacturer and get their web store. I think you will find just about whatever size box you would want. But as these are for archival storage, then they are relatively expensive.

Jim

There was an article in an old (1990) war game magazine how to do this for 6mm DBA. Anyone have a copy of that article?

Staines wargames produced something very similar (but a bit bigger!) for their excellent ACW participation game that was going round UK shows last year. There's a photo of it on my blog here…

link

…and an article on their website here….

link

Yes, this is an archival box. I think it was $20 USD but I used a 40% off coupon at Michael's.

A big pizza box would work as well. I just wanted something that looked really nice in the living room as I work on it…

@Blax:

Yes, I'm going to update this into a "workbench" style article…