Project Status as of 6/27/2016:
Progress continues on building the forest road to Gondolin.

Current Photos:






Original Project Prompt:
Hello all! After several years away from the hobby a couple good friends and I have decided to return with a will! Our first project: building several permanent terrain boards! (We always made modular terrain in the past). And so begins the construction of the hidden Elvish city of Gondolin from the Silmarillion!

My goal is not only to make an outstanding terrain board to play on but also to document the process along the way, make a sourcebook to go along with it, and make some awesome battle reports once it is all done! In this thread I will be posting my progress week by week (or more often if I get more done haha!), including my thoughts and plans... Beginning now!

I want to design the board to be:
1) Beautiful/ enjoyable to look at and enjoy as a model in itself
2) Very fun and balanced to play on
3) Epic in every possible way!

My friends (who are working on boards of their own) and I have come up with a terrain board system we will be using so that all our different boards are interconnectable. Thus this board will be 4'x4' (~1.2 meters square) with ground level being 1.5" of pink foam above the particle board base to allow for interesting elevation options, rivers, etc.

Eagerly looking forward to seeing this progress! All the best for the project!

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Better, though difficult, the right way to go, than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe. John Bunyan - Pilgrim's Progress

Good luck, look forward to seeing it develop

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Harfoots-The first of the Hobbit people to cross over the Misty Mountains and enter Eriador.

What are you using for inspiration? There are many images of Gondolin created by many artists. Examples in Google image search -
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=h ... AQ&dur=549
http://www.theonering.com/galleries/pro ... -john-howe

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Published ebooks:
Instrument of the Empire
A Note of Defiance
Phantom Ships, Ghost Flotilla
More to come!

Sounds like a massive undertaking, II hope that it goes well and that we can see the images soon!

This could be something special. I think some photos will give us the idea of what your aiming for and then we can start putting our pennies worth in to help. Good luck, it sounds a wonderful project.

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Sounds like an amazing and very ambitious project!
Here's something that might inspire you:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/946 ... index.html
and
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/946 ... index.html
Also, some people (or someone?) has already made a Fan Supplement on the Fall of Gondolin, found here: kb.php?a=100
That will surely also be inspiring to you.

Good luck, and keep us updated!

Wow! Seriously amazing!

I'm afraid that one is gone

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MEMM I: 4th (Mordor+Harad) MEMM II: 4th (Galadhrim) MEMM III: 2nd (Thorin's Company)

The site still works though.
http://www.freewebs.com/fallofgondolin/
The PDF can be found here: http://www.freewebs.com/fallofgondolin/ ... _v_1.3.pdf

Thank you for the quick responses everyone! I love teamwork and this is excellent!

The images and supplement Dorthonion and Feanor posted are excellent resources - thank you for posting those. I'm going for something along the lines of Dorthonion's second image (the illustration by John Howe). That is very similar to what I was imagining in my head. That supplement is excellent! I will no doubt be looking to it for inspiration once I get to the point of making the sourcebook.

As I begin the planning of the city, there are important decisions to be made. Here are my thoughts on some of them. Please do post your own opinions and thoughts about these! Together we can do better than alone.
1) Should the model include, at the very least, the foothills of the surrounding mountains? It would add a lot to it. At the moment I do not think so. A 4'x4' board is small as it is for what I have in mind and the extra 6" or so for the foothills would seriously encroach on the limited space. Perhaps in the future I can add 2'x4' boards around the edges with the mountains.

2) The answer to [1] being no, should this model even include the outer city walls or should it focus exclusively on the city proper? I think it should include the walls since these seem too important of a part to leave out in my opinion.

3) Not so much a decision as an awesome idea I had haha! For gameplay purposes all the buildings, towers, etc. will be accessible on the inside. Instead of having roofs that lift off the buildings, half the building could lift off! They will be built sort of like puzzle pieces so that when the top 'half' is off it still looks very cool. What's so great about this idea? For scenario gameplay orcs and whatnot will be able to set building on fire. The top half is lifted off, the interior floor will be flippable (ie. the whole, beautiful wooden floor can be flipped over to reveal burnt, cracked wooden floor), and flame markers (using steel wool) placed inside. Now the building is in ruins and on fire! Simply lift, flip, and place markers. Easy!

4) Whether all the city streets should be accessible to all units? I am imagining fun strategic scenarios wherein a balrog is marching down the main city streets while elves flee into narrower streets where the balrog cannot reach, etc.

Work on the blueprints continue! Please post your thoughts and ideas! Thank you for the feedback.

Looking forward to seeing this project

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My Miniatures Blog (covering LOTR/Terminator/Doctor Who/Warpath and more!):
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Those are some awesome ideas, Turgon_Seven!
I especially like idea 3. In this article, it is mentioned how you can easily achieve this: http://www.hirstarts.com/pristowr/pristowr.html
The Hirst Arst moulds look amazing, and I've seen people put it to great use. There are lots of moulds (found here: http://www.hirstarts.com/molds/molds.html ), maybe also some that you could use.

As for the walls, I would personally like to include them. What I would do, however, is make most of the table the city, then make walls on some 6" to 12" away from one edge, and fill the rest (between the walls and the edge) with grass, as outside the city.
This way you will still have a lot of city, and have the walls. The siege scenarios that you'll play on them will probably go fast (as in, the attacker will reach the walls quickly). This, I think, would not be a problem. Usually, the walls are situated far away from one edge, and reinforcements often come from that far away edge. If the edge is not far away, you will get more like a feeling of a huge wave of evil troops, as the reinforcements can climb the ladders one or two turns after joining (whereas they normally take some 4 or more turns to do so).
Just an idea though.

Wow this is going to be good.... I too am hoping to create the first age but my hope is to recreate the entire first age..... looking good

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"A king is he that can hold his own, or else his title is vain." - Maedhros

In answer to your points
1. No to the foothills at this stages, though I like the extra board idea.
2. A must. Not to do the city walls would be a crime.
3. Great idea
4. I would prefer the roads and ways around a city to be in scale. So the main roads would be accessible to most and the side streets to only a few.

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A couple days late, but here is my first blueprint draft (see original post for picture)! Each grid cell represents 1" (the diameter of a standard infantry model). The shaded circle roughly represents the hill the city is built upon, accounting for slope. In this blueprint you can see the city walls (with 4 gates, North, S E and W), with towers flanking each gate. The Tower of the King is prominent in the center with a small raised pavilion at its base. The rest of the outlined structures will be buildings of various types; houses, stables, blacksmith, etc.

Please let me know what you think about the design! I plan to begin shaping the terrain two weeks from now, until then I will continue perfecting the blueprint design haha.

I would like to find a way to incorporate more paths and buildings, but a 4'x4' board is more constricting than I had imagined. Ideas to optimize the design to allow more space are certainly welcome!

At first glance the buildings are not large enough to have usable interiors. You may have trouble reaching the interior.This will depend on how tall the hill, walls and towers are and the height of the table you plain to build to put the board on.
While you are in the planing stages you should make a flat paper template of the plain. Lay it out on the table and see if you can find space for more elements. Cut flat paper templates for each of the buildings so that you can verify the figures will fit and make final measurements and adjustments.
The only measurement I have to go by is your grid. How tall do you plain to build?

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"the same as a duck you must be made of wood"

I think that a 4x4 board would be too small for a city; perhaps a quarter, with the Tower of the King on one corner and the walls curving round. That might allow you to make larger buildings. Remember also that the urban battlefield is three-dimensional, so you might want to think about bridges between buildings and over streets, tunnels/sewers (do Elves go potty??).

I'll steal the idea that streets should be different widths, thanks; should have remembered that myself. Also, build barricades big enough to block streets, made of heaps of furniture, broken masonry and suchlike. It depends on how long you want to give the defenders to prepare, and can give a bit of interest for a rearguard action while someone blocks the street behind you.

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Sometimes you CAN be the only one in step...

I agree. If I was going to build your plain I would expand the plan to 4'X4' quarters but only build half of the city.



This 1998 version of the White City by Castle Works is an example of what I mean. I repaired it last summer before It went into storage.



This is still too large. It requires a 6' X 12' table. I would stay with your plain but make two 4'X4' Quarters so that the city would fit on a 4'X 8' table. It would have much more play value.



By making half of the city you will be able to reach the defenders and fight battles street by street and assault the walls too.

I am looking forward to your build. I wish I had room to build another castle.

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"the same as a duck you must be made of wood"

I'd be inclined to go that way, but whatever you do it's shaping up to be epic.

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