The Capua arena

Well, as it seems that the Oakenshield Ludus are on to their second arena, I thought that I'd better post mine. Unlike that Oakenshield lot, I haven't raided any skips for mine; instead I have mainly utilised crap lying around the garage.

First off I needed to establish the size of the arena. From memory, the rules suggest something like 18 to 24 inches as a guideline. As it happens I had a piece of plywood of approximately those dimensions lying around. As I would be using 54 mm figures the arena could probably benefit from being a tad bigger but I was keen to stick with whatever was available. So after a quick prime with yellow ochre acrylic paint the board was ready for a layer of sand.

 As it happens I already had a large bag of play sand which was perfect for the job; fine grains without any bits and a good colour. The board was covered with a layer of PVA glue and the sand sprinkled on top. After allowing the sand to dry, the next step was to fix it in place with more PVA. A dilute solution was applied using a garden mist spray, however this tended to dislodge the sand and the previously smooth layer was looking decidedly more 'bumpy'. However, on reflection, I decided this gave the arena floor more 'depth' and suggested a well trodden surface.

Unfortunately, after leaving to dry for a couple of days, the baseboard developed a pronounced warp. This was fixed by screwing a couple of battens to the underside, which coincidentally provided a surface to affix the arena walls to.

 The walls themselves were cut from polystyrene packaging material and attached to thick card cut from old lever arch folders.

The polystyrene was simply to add bulk and would ultimately receive a facing of thin card (old cereal packets -  porridge to be exact).

With the addition of the walls I now had a rectangular playing surface. However, I wanted an oval arena look to the whole thing. In actual fact I opted to essentially 'round off' the corners, rather than go for a proper oval shape. This was simply to keep the playing area as large as possible.

After the corners I then added  couple of archways to complete the basic shape.

Once I had the basic shape, I covered the whole thing with cheap ready mixed interior filler for the heady sum of a couple of quid from Tescos (other brands are available). Apart from a tube of interior grab adhesive this was the only item bought just for this project.

I did wonder if I should leave it at that but the filler dried a brilliant white, which I decided was just too white. So the next step was to paint the walls. I used a mix of acrylic paint and more PVA to seal the filler.

I'm not too convinced by the colour but I was attempting to achieve a contrast with the arena sand. Maybe I will lighten it a tad at a later date but it will do for now,

I have a few ideas to spruce it up in the future but the important thing at the moment is to crack on with painting the gladiators. I will almost certainly add some gates to the archways and have a half baked idea to integrate some dice towers into the structure but this will do fine for the first games.