OK, so I have this thing for the Aztecs. I've read lots about them. I have an Aztec calender large enough to be the centerpiece or the living room wall. I have some bonafide artifacts, and some nifty replicas of their fun stuff. Even my fiance is an Aztec raltion (there are some Aztec ruins in the town where she was born.) And I really wanted to build some useful Aztec-themed gaming terrain. The problem is, of course, that my game of choice is HeroClix and there isn't much going on related to the Aztecs. And finding good 1.5" grid-compatible Aztec scenery is close to impossible.

So, I decided to do it myself. I would go ahead and use Worldworks products as the basis for my Aztec ruins, and build a nice board for my fiance to try and tempt her to play more HeroClix with me.

The problem is, aside from some ground tiles, almost nothing in the Worldworks range is even vaguely useful for this sort of project (sorry, Denny!) Which means that I have to create most of my templates from scratch. But first I needed to know what I was going to build!

I like to take existing HeroClix maps and rebuild them in 3D using different settings. After much deliberation, I decided to use the GenCon 2007 Party Favor map, the Amusement Park side rather than the Castle Ruins side. here is what my source map looks like from either end:





Rather than having a big ferris wheel in the middle, I would have a row of stelae, maybe four or five of them to be the Blocking terrain. The Hindering terrain could simply be "jungle", the two corner Interior areas would be big stone structures, and the four smaller Interiors would be wooden workman's huts. I panned to use the grass/dirt tiles from Bits Of Mayhem for the basic ground (see, Denny, there is a bit of WWG in here!)

So, my necesity became finding a front-on picture of an Aztec building, a wooden hut, and a bunch of stelae so that I could build some templates from them. I just needed them to be high enough resolution that they would be usable. In the end I decided on using some Maya stonework instead, because there were better pictures available online for me to swipe. these are my source pictures:





I found a picture of a wooden fence that became my hut template, but given the difficulty I had in working with it I cannot post it here (long story, if you really want to know I will post it later.)

I finished all of my templates, and am using them as wallpaper on foamcore walls for the interiors or building the steae by repeating the same side four ways. As it comes along, i wil be posting pictures of the actual board, as well as some of the other steps I took to build what I needed.