Malifaux Board for Beginners - Part 4 - Sideways Thinking

As we head towards the weekend, I have a hankering to get some time in on my beginners board. Between tournaments and real life this project has felt a bit neglected recently, but the good news is that my ebay purchases have all turned up, and it's full steam ahead this weekend.

progress to date


closeups of the textured wallpapers I'm using


dry fitting the sideboards on my old urban 4x4



Last night I was playing with the lengths of wood I had put aside for the sideboards. One will show the soulstone and victory point counts and the second will show the schemes and strategies being played. As I laid this out and tried to make it all fit I made two discoveries that will tweak my design just a little.

Firstly I realised that the soulstone and victory tracks each need 11 positions, not 10. I realised as I played it through in my mind that each player starts with 0 VP's and can get down to 0 soul stones, so I need a position for this in the track areas. The 11 positions stem from the fact you can have upto 10 soulstones in a brawl and can earn upto 10 victory points. I also considered that one count goes up and whilst the other comes down and wondered for little while about how to do the tracks before realising I was getting a bit silly about the whole thing and I really need to press on...



This shows the positions on each track, per player. The intention is that each player will have two stones that they move between the positions. To stop inadvertent movement I'm intending to drill through this sideboard and create places where the stone will sit. (It'll make more sense when I post more WIP photos after the weekend.)

Then as I worked on the card management side I realised I wasn't going to get three schemes side by side so I came up with this alternative placement.


Finally came the realisation that if these sideboards fit perfectly up against the inner game board and they are all made of the same thickness MDF, then lifting the game board out to switch to the reverse side is going to be fiddly. I thought about reducing the thickness of the sideboard but ruled that out because I already have the wood cut. The answer in the end is to cut a handgrip sized hole in the sideboards, so I can get my hands in to lift out and flip the inner gaming board.

It may all be semantics, I haven't yet put it all down together, but I'm excited to get this project back underway and show some progress after the weekend.