Blood Bowl Pitch Case Part 2

Following on from the construction of the case, I started building the pitch and dugouts. This was an interesting change from the first section of the build, because it allowed me to be more creative.

The first thing I did was to undercoat the entire outside of the case. I think I gave it three coats before moving on to black Rustoleum All Purpose Gloss. Then I gave it a few coats of satin yacht varnish for protection. The finish isn't perfect because of the texture on the plywood, but I'm still very happy with it. 

The next step was to make the pitch and lay out the markings. I started off with a sheet of static grass mat, the kind used by railway modellers. Using a ruler and paintbrush I measured out the squares and painted them in. This took a lot of time and patience! The result was far from perfect, with many of the squares being a few mm too small or big, but it's almost impossible to be completely accurate. Mistakes were easy enough to fix, I just used some PVA and static grass to cover them up. 

I made quite a few corrections to the pitch after this photo was taken! I then used a knife to cut along the Line of Scrimmage, and glued the two halves into the case. 

With the pitch completed, I could start on the dugouts, score counter and turn trackers.  I decided that the half of the case to the right of each player would contain dugouts, while the left would be taken up by turn and reroll tracks. 

I cut squares from a thin sheet of plywood (I think I got it from the back of an abandoned bedside locker!) and glued them in to make the turn and reroll tracks. I decided to only include one turn track per player to save space. After each half of the game they can simply be reset. 

   Numbers were painted into each track. 

I left some empty space on either side of the board so that I could make a scatter template and score tracker. I wanted the scatter template to look more interesting than just a few numbers, so I decided to sculpt it from Milliput. I rolled out a thin layer of Milliput onto greaseproof paper and sculpted the numbers 1 to 8, them I made a Blood Bowl ball. 

I decided that there would be four rooms in each dugout; Reserves, Knocked Out, Dead and Injured, and a Dungeon for players who have been sent off. Using some 3mm MDF and a sharp knife, I carved out some walls and doors to go between each room. 

     The bars in this one were made from           paperclip wire. 

I wasn't sure at first how to make the floors of the dugouts. I decided eventually to use coffee stirrers to imitate stone blocks! I cut them into different lengths and used PVA to glue them in. 

I started to furnish each room. I made a ladder from matchsticks for one reserves box, and a flight of stairs for the other. The steps were made by gluing bits of sprue together, then sculpting stone details with Milliput. 

I made "Home" and "Away" signs using old metal sprues. These were easy to make, I just cut them to be rectangular and painted them. 

I painted a beer barrel from an old Ogre kit for one reserves box. I filled it with some clear resin. 

 I made a stretcher for the Knocked Out box using two lengths of paperclip wire and Milliput. Again I sculpted this on a sheet of baking paper (used wet pallet paper actually!) to stop it sticking. 

I made some coffins for the Dead and Injured rooms using small pieces of thin plywood covered in Milliput. 

Some benches were made for the dugouts using matchsticks. Once all the furniture was finished, I painted the floors and walls of the dugouts and glued everything in. 

Here is the completed pitch! 

In each left hand corner, I made extra sections, to be used as dice trays.

I'm really happy with how the case turned out!