GREATHELM has picked up a lot of steam in our Discord server and across the internet, and for good reason! I reviewed it a couple weeks ago and have been blown away by how good the game is, go read the review if you have no idea what I’m talking about. 

If you’re not familiar with it, and are too cowardly to go read the review, GREATHELM is a game of twelve knights (or similar melee-wielding models, it’s super minis agnostic) fighting on a simple sheet of paper. That’s the whole board size: An A4 or US Letter size sheet of paper. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to try it and then was so pleased that it’s also very good since it fits on my kitchen table with plenty of extra room. You can also take it out to the pub in a single box playing wargames with your drink of choice in hand.

I’m a big fan of the Really Useful Boxes for storing minis, like many are, and while lurking around the 1st Corps website looking at historical models discovered these MDF trays that stack and fit surprisingly snug in a box. I got two of the 33mm trays to go into a 4L box to make two GREATHELM boards with: One simpler sheet and another more complicated one. Then I accidentally bought a 4L Really Useful Box with “hobby tray” instead of an empty one and discovered that the hobby tray will fit perfectly with one of these MDF trays, too.

Wargame in a Box

To the bottom of the 1st Corps MDF tray I glued down a piece of rubber steel cut to A4 size and stuck a laminated print out of the GREATHELM board to that. I wanted the bottom to be magnetised so models don’t move around mid-game with a small knock, as a very clumsy wargamer this is a constant concern; also planned on that being how I transported the models before realising the dynamic poses were just a touch too tall to actually work in a 33mm tray. Something I could have thought of testing sooner. Oops? It’s still nice to have for games, though. So used the excess strips of rubber steel gluing them to the sides to transport the models that way, which works perfectly.

I like using the handgunner as a “crossbow” in game, having an extra model or two per side makes back-to-back games more interesting by having a small amount of variety to choose from for the players. Adding the hobby tray on top for dice, measuring sticks, mini tape measure, and tokens was a very happy accident and it fits very snug together. I threw this into my backpack standing on its short end and everything arrived exactly as I packed it.

I took this down to the pub for a couple games and drinks with Corrode, teaching him the game, and watching his last-surviving crossbowman surviving far too many attacks while wiping out five of my knights piecemeal. It was absurd. You might be thinking “wow crossbows are really good” and you’d be completely wrong, that’s not what did it; that knight missed both ranged shots he attempted and then just murdered five guys with his dagger instead. The point, though, is that this is all very compact and we were able to play something fun and dynamic out. Love that.

A More Involved Board

As great as all of that is we can do something a little more impressive and involved. So that’s exactly what I did. I bought two of these trays with the idea of stacking them on top of each other before learning how well that hobby tray worked out. This one I wanted to go all-out with for something that looks a lot nicer to play on with a river right down the middle for some interesting gameplay. Rivers slow down your guys a bit, not allowing 6’s to be used to move across them; naturally a bridge for duels would be needed for epic moments (or very frustrating ones).

Everything I used to make the board. You’ll easily be able to replace any of these with your own favourites, these are just what I had to hand other than the acrylic paste that I picked up on the cheap for this project and used about half of. That tub of sand and rubble is a conglomeration of sand and small rocks that I’ve accumulated over the years and use as a basing material sometimes; it’s not from any particular place but there’s plenty of similar mixes you can get.

• Colourforge Hyrax Brown spray
• Pro Acryl Grey Blue
• Citadel Mournfang Brown
• Citadel Gorthor Brown
• Citadel Dawnstone
• MIG Acrylic Water Pacific Waters
• Scenics 4mm spring static grass
• Acrylic modeling paste
• Tub of sand and small stones
• Variety of slate pieces
• Moss tufts

First step was slapping down a nice thick layer of acrylic paste so that the river sits lower than the rest of the board. I just moved it around with an old brush to create varied heights that would look somewhat natural leaving the middle of the board where the river is going to go. Then adding the sand/stone mix on top while it’s wet so it sticks.

A bit of paste got in the middle by mistake, but it works out to have a few stones in the bottom of the river, too, so that’s fine. You don’t have to be very neat about it, just do what feels right. This paste is going to take a couple days to dry, so before that happens (and preferably pretty early in the process) push some larger rocks into it. I’ve got a baggie of slate and picked the flattest topped ones that are too large for basing use so that knights could easily stand on top of them, these aren’t intended to impede movement in game just to look nice.

I picked up a cheap resin bridge from Alternative Miniatures alongside some nice metal medieval figures specifically for this project, that got glued down with super glue either side of the bank and I was very happy it was the right size for this game; perfect width for one model to cross at a time or to meet an enemy knight on and fight to the death! Or to be pushed off by a coward into the water. After that’s down and the paste is all dry, some days later, I sprayed it Hyrax Brown from Colourforge.

Time to start painting! Start with a heavy drybrush of Mournfang Brown and then a lighter one of Gorthor Brown. I was a bit heavy handed with this making some of that gravel mix come off revealing some of the unsprayed sand below so that just gets covered up later with static grass. After that, drybrush the slate in Dawnstone and pick out some of the larger rocks in the sand mix with it as well, this step is slightly tedious but makes for some really nice detail later on! The bridge got a heavy drybrush with Gorthor Brown and some sort of khaki paint I had to hand that I can’t remember, it hardly matters, just make it a lighter brown than the ground.

Now it’s time to add in the water! Before the water effects is slapped on you need to paint the river because it’s somewhat transparent, I went for a very blue looking river so that all of this looks a bit fantasy instead of hyper realistic in any way so painted it with Grey Blue. After the paint is dry then get a big, old, brush that you don’t care about too much to scoop and move around the water texture; this stuff is very thick and holds its shape very well so make some waves and wait a day or so for it to fully dry before adding the static grass or else you’ll have a very, very, grassy river. Unless that’s what you want, then do that, I guess. It’s your board, make it how you want.

Once that’s all dry it should look like this! Really big fan of this stuff, it lets me avoid pouring resin.

Once again MAKE SURE THE WATER EFFECT IS FULLY DRY. I didn’t. It was still very slightly tacky and I was impatient so I just slapped some matte varnish over it so I could get to the static grass.

To stick that down I like to use mod podge instead of just PVA because I feel like it has a better hold on it. Buy a big tub and it’ll last you years, probably, I just bought my second one after the first was purchased back in 2022. It’s not even expensive. I don’t have one of those fancy static grass applicators and this step is messy but I put the glue down where I wanted it and sprinkled static grass over it, pushed it down into the mod podge lightly, and tipped the leftover into a big bowl to reuse later. To make it stick up a little bit and not lie too flat just blow on it a bit or use a hand held, battery powered, air blower thing that creates a larger mess than you expected but certainly did the trick. Either one.

As a finishing touch I added a few darker moss tufts onto rocks and into some very small areas for a bit of variety. I think it looks neat.

That’s it! There’s a lot that you can do with your own board but this sure is a very nice, simple, way of making a relatively flat board that will be easy to transport.

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.