Carcearion:
Wow man, that’s so cool.
I wonder if I could make a magnetized travel board for tiny KoW.
Admiral:
Would it be stupid of me to propose that you send over your pictures of a portable Heroquest boardgame to some producer of like boardgames, and see if they’re interested in putting something similar into production?
Someone over at Warseer did something similar mini-magnetic with Warmaster or Epic 40k miniatures for travels, so I believe there would be some market for it.
Anyway, your work so far is darn impressive, particularly that book cover for the whole set!
Carcearion:
Would it be stupid of me to propose that you send over your pictures of a portable Heroquest boardgame to some producer of like boardgames, and see if they're interested in putting something similar into production?I second this idea, this is wonderful stuff you've made! who knows with a little luck people like me and Admiral might get the chance to buy one of Nicodemus's Tiny Traveling Dungeons :cheers
Admiral
Nicodemus:
Thanks for the compliments! I certainly don’t have the patience at the moment to be making more than one of these for myself 
Progress is going slow and steady.
5-minute two-part epoxy is coming in real handy for this project at the moment. I used it to glue down the plastic “gold” trim onto the cover, as well as the purple glass beads… cover is nearly there. Just need to get the hole punch going to make the smaller accent pieces and the rivets that hold the trim on.
Here’s some of the tiles so far. It’s going to get crowded.
I’m going to quickly run out of space to contain all of the parts so I decided to make a stacking shelf insert out of foamcore and a piece of sheet metal. I cut away the top cardstock layer of the foamcore to give the sheet metal something to sit in and made rabbet joints for the frame.
After using epoxy to adhere the metal plate to the foamcore I used a piece of black cardstock with a thin layer of epoxy over top of the foramcore and sheet metal and set a book and a 20 lb weight on it for 15 mins. After it was set I trimmed away the excess cardstock.
I also made some recessed spaces in the supports for magnets, which I epoxied into position. Now the whole thing holds itself securely to the bottom of the book, which has a piece of sheet metal in it.
The only thing I didn’t take a picture of is re-doing the longer pieces of the support frame, it was ~1/4" too tall for the book so I trimmed it down 1/2"
Here’s the new insert holding the more common tiles that will be needed for most games, demonstrating that the sheet magnets and metal plate do their job just fine:
The insert still has a little bit of a gap so I don’t have to have things perfectly arranged underneath, making pack-up quicker.
Here’s the insert when sitting in place. There’s loads of space under the insert and still lots of space around the sides, and I haven’t made any attempts to organize the bottom layer to save space. Certainly the miniatures, doors and furniture are going to take up a lot of space, as are all the cards that still need to be printed. A have several ideas for saving space. I’m thinking the HeroQuest dice tower (didn’t I mention that already??) might double as a tuckbox for all of the cards when it’s packed away. We’ll just have to see how it goes :hat off
~N
Jackswift:
Completely brilliant! :hat off Of I had time I’d love to make one of these.
Carcearion:
Wow! Great progress!
I can’t wait to see how this all turns out, but its already a very impressive build!
Nicodemus:
Updated MiniQuest board layout.
I flipped the tile portion of the board by 180-degrees, as I’ve always wanted the “HeroQuest” logo to face away from Zargon instead of toward. I also added a dark border.
MiniQuest Dice Tower
With the small board size there’s no space to roll dice. Now they’ll have their own dedicated space on the fold-out board. The paired magnets on the right have been marked with a Sharpie so I can keep their poles aligned as they’re going to be embedded into the edges of the dice tower and the border that contains the dice when they roll out. The exit of the dice tower also has a small angled ramp to ensure the dice are “ejected” from the bottom.
I measured the inside of the Artifact book to ensure that the dice tower wouldn’t be too wide or deep, ensuring there would be space for it. I also made sure the inside of the tower would be just large enough to serve as a card holder during transportation.
After putting the magnets and artwork on the outside here’s now it looks relative to the board. Not quite centred, but I needed to leave space on the left for the Treasure deck as well as a discard pile.
All decked out with Les Edwards HQ artwork:
Once I had everything fitting correctly I finished excavating the space for the dice tower and once I knew the exact space the inside would be I cut the last image to fit.
Final assembly:
Rolling some dice (and to give can idea of scale). I’ll likely cover up the exposed edges of foamboard with black cardstock.
Test card back in the tower
Packing up… I haven’t yet made any attempts to organize or save space. For sure there’s going to be enough space for sleeved cards for the base game, not sure how many expansions it’ll fit.
Here’s what MiniQuest will look like ready for transport :hat off
~N
Admiral:
This is a work of love. Well thought-out and well-looking. Top job as always!
Nicodemus:
Finishing up the MiniQuest game board.
I used some good quality linen book binding tape for the edges and folding parts.
I got distracted for a couple of days going through a cycle of increasingly complex and involved designs for the Hero character area, with plans for another metal plate and magnetic trackers with numbers on them for Attack, Defence, BP and MP, and an area with a backpack for each character and using some of the simplified line drawing artwork from the rule book, then realized that part of the beauty of HeroQuest is the simplicity and that during game play we usually just remember what gear we have and now many Attack and Defend each character has anyway. Not to mention we’ll still be using character sheets for serious campaigns, etc. – so this is what I went with, nice and simple.
Four Heroes, on the stairs, with a door waiting to be opened.
Time to finish the rest of the dungeon bits. The furniture is maybe 10-20% larger than the originals at this scale. Time to start making some small books and scrolls… and I’m about to find out how good my green stuff skills are once I get to the tomb and the fireplace. Yikes.
~N
Dînadan:
Is it just me, or does the dice tower kinda look like a mini pinball table?
Enjoysrandom:
Best themed pinball ever! But it looks really great, professional as Nico… that would make cousin Roman proud
Nicodemus:
A little update:
Haha, get it?!!? :) “A little update!” :hat off Bwa, ha ha!!
x.x :s x.x
~N
Skink:
This made my day, both the update and the joke :D:D:D
Haha, get it?!!? :) "A little update!" :hat off Bwa, ha ha!!
x.x :s x.x
~N
Nicodemus
Nicodemus:
Sadly, our house got broken into a couple of days ago and my good $750 Canon camera was stolen along with a few other things (iPad, etc). The blog pics are going to be with a cheap camera for a while… these are the best I can do x.x
Bookshelves are taking longer than any other pieces
Overview of all of the pieces so far.
Finished the scales for the Alchemist’s Bench, the Throne, and the edge trim on the two Tables.
Finishing the brick work on the Fireplace. Once dried I’ll file the edges down to get rid of the rounded bits of green stuff.
Some edge sanding needed on the top of this piece too… but otherwise one Bookcase down!
The Weapons Rack
~N
Admiral:
Damn shame about the burglary. Work on miniquest is progressing fine indeed. Good job!
Nicodemus:
Getting the Fireplace going on. I’ve got the first few coats of paint on all of the other pieces too!
Size comparison… I also noticed after the pics were taken that the photo over the Fireplace was upside down x.x Quick fix to turn it right way up, but a good reminder to not work without proper lighting to check what I’m doing with these extra small pieces!
~N
Nicodemus:
It’s all pretty wee.
~N
Nicodemus:
MiniQuest Furniture Complete!
Summary of everything. The Supermacro really shows up the dodgy painting, but considering my finest brush that I usually use for eyes was even too small for some of the details I think this came together fairly well… I can see some spots I’d like to touch-up at this resolution, but in real life it’s not noticeable at all :hat off
A couple of the original pieces shown for scale.
The beauty of the thing is that it all still packs up into the wooden book box and I can tip the board upside down and nothing moves
~N
Carcearion:
Gorgeous work man! I think they look excellent, especially considering the scale! :o
Are you gonna sneak in a smig of chaos dwarf anywhere in the MiniQuest?
Nicodemus:
Are you gonna sneak in a smig of chaos dwarf anywhere in the MiniQuest?Haha, thought about it! ;P I was digging through my old digital HQ files and found a Monster card I had made for a Chaos Dwarf back in 2000 :o
Carcearion
They're going to make a come-back, but I'm calling them Dark Dwarfs, they don't be aligned with Chaos though, just a faction of Dwarfs isolated from the surface for hundreds of years.
Anyway, you sort of have the right idea. This exercise was to get me started thinking about small scale HeroQuest. I want one of my pieces for the Chaos Dwarf-themed dungeon tiles set (in my Dreams of Hashut blog) to have a table with a game of HQ setup and left mid-game. Even at the scale I made MiniQuest at it's not going to be possible to do much more than have coloured blobs in the general shape of figures, if I'm lucky. Some of the more recognizable pieces of furniture are do-able too, but not the bookcases!!
~N