"Wargaming INSIDE buildings (the miniatures... Not you)" Topic

This is an article I have made about wargaming inside buildings, as most of our wargames are played in an outdoor area (a Harbour, a town, open fields…)

This is quite obvious when we play big battles but when we play small skirmishes we can play INSIDE the terrain buildings, although most of us don't do it…

I'll try to explain how we can play inside houses, headquarters, bunkers… And add a new dimension to the gaming experience.

Hope you like it!

link

That's one of the reasons I'm so happy with laser cut MDF buildings from Sarissa and Thingsfromthebasement. Removable roofs and second stories help immensely.
Thingsfromthebasement also have 1/56 "dollhouse" furniture.

That does look interesting.

Grelber

Way more than interesting. When started war gaming with D&D we used a classroom blackboard and drew rooms with chalk, it was large and could be modified as we went along. This is 100% that you could ask for.

I started out with printed floors and balsa wood walls. I built a massive dungeon with both fully built rooms as well as movable walls. A few years ago I got a very good deal on a couple boxes of ceramic dungeon walls and rooms. These were the type that you cast the blocks and build the walls. I had to remove a ton of skulls and added a few extra pieces and now have a really nice set up.

At some point aren't you just playing Dungeons and Dragons?

At some point aren't you just playing Dungeons and Dragons?

just?

Various P&P rulesets and scenarios go deep into tactical simulations. Wether you come from the narrative end or from the tabletop warfare, if the result is fun…

I like the concepts in the article: make something that is both inexpensive and that doesn't take up much storage space. I tend to manage the first but not the second.

For large buildings, I usually just use shoe boxes with removable lids and handle combat inside them abstractly, just giving everyone benefits or penalties for spotting, ranged fire, and close assault, as appropriate. I may cut doors and windows, or just draw them in place.

The lid gets turned upside-down to become the walled roof. I'll put HVAC, antennas, etc., on the roof for cover, as well as entry points to the building, but the roof is really just outdoor space.

That's pretty simple, and I get to use the shoebox to store other terrain items, which helps with storage space.

I would like to do spaceship interiors or other interior spaces for small skirmish and RPG action.

The current crop of skirmish games will probably handle this sort of thing, if they are getting down to the level of individual characters. I can't imagine anyone playing Infinity or Malifaux with a whole quarter of the battlezone taken up by a building you cannot enter.
Then again, when you enter a building in Savage Showdown, you take the mini off the table. It would have to be a large building to bother fighting inside of.

I always try to do everything the cheapest possible way, and as a solo player I have to keep everything at home, so I found this storage solution.

When we are dealing with playing inside a building, the building almost takes the whole table. Most times I have played inside buildings the terrain was almost 90x90…

When we play our battles in the outside, most buildings are really small (compared to how they should be) as they are intended to be obstacles and covers, not to be played inside, so, there is no point in playing inside those buildings as they will just have one or two small rooms…

That's a good solution.

I was going to do nesting boxes for dungeon layouts but walls really interfered with play so opted instead for isometric layouts.

Not presently doing any modern games so have not transposed the approach in that direction. The 2D solutions you show, augmented with blocks for elevation when needed, and with underfootprint 3D furniture, would do that.

Here's another option:

inlgames.com/natm.htm

And how to put it together:

inlgames.com/modhou.htm

Plus, the dungeon crawl:

inlgames.com/layers.htm