I’ve wanted a desert board for Battletech for a while now. Well, I finally got around to it! Thinking through what to do for this board was a challenge. My other Battletech board is a cityscape and I love it. I didn’t want my desert board to be the same thing… but in the desert. This proved a little challenging. Thinking beyond buildings can be hard sometimes.

Well, I solved it. I decided I wanted more “native” buildings, so I used some great files for scifi desert buildings off Thingiverse (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4152981#google_vignette) which I shrank down to size. After that I felt I needed more of a reason to fight over the area, so I decided it would be a fuel storage site, hence all the generic industrial containers.

I still felt I needed something to make the board pop: that’s where the monorail came in. It’s a bit of a nuisance to assemble each time but it provided a great eye catching feature to the board which has earned me a few compliments. I made it by using a file from Corvus Games and shrinking it only 50%–it works if you don’t think about it too hard. (https://corvusgamesterrain.com/products/cyberpunk-monorail-digital-stl-3d-printable)

I’m happy with this overall. It makes for a great start to a desert theme. In the future I may add more, though I’m as yet unsure what. Perhaps a river and bridges, or maybe more industrial machinery. As I find things I’ll add them. It’s good to finally have a second setting. Battletech: Alpha Strike has proven to be a rewarding investment and I greatly look forward to more games.