2 : Basic Building Blocks

My 18mm Frozen City Ruins models were designed first and foremost for magical Frostgrave encounters. However, I also designed the floors to be tiled. This is an important feature of the designs. With the stairways and all the steps also conforming to a regular tile size means that the models can also be used for dungeon crawl games. The tiles can be used to count the moves of the characters, even up and down the stairs! I aimed to do the same with the new upscaled range.

The size of the basic floor tile in a dungeon crawl game is obviously very important. When upscaling to 28mm, I made the floor tiles 28mm square. 28mm Frostgrave miniatures are generally mounted on 25mm round bases. 28mm tiles should accommodate not only these but also slightly larger bases.

To aid gameplay and setting up a game, the floor tiles need to be grouped. This creates the basic module. Many of the building models are designed to fit this module. It makes planning and setting up a tabletop pretty simple. I stuck with the same number of tiles as my 18mm models, with the basic module being 5 x 5 floor tiles. This made a 28mm module 140mm square. However, this wouldn’t stop me designing narrower lengths of floor that would suit the corridors of the traditional dungeon crawl as well!

The heights of the Frozen City Ruins levels, like the floor tiles, maintain a consistent size. This means that the models are not only modular side by side but also one on top of the other!

As characters can leap and climb pretty freely in a Frostgrave game, I thought it was important that a climb from one level to another could be covered by a character’s typical three inch climb move. This was a major factor in arriving at the height of the walls.

With the basic geometry figured out, I was ready to start building a 28mm Frozen City!