Circus Maximus

Looking at the recommended playing area,

• 6mm Models minimum track size 60 cm x 30 cm
• 10-20mm Models minimum track size 90 cm x 45 cm
• Larger scale models minimum track size 120 cm x 60 cm

I needed to give some thought to how big the playing surface would actually be.

I had two main considerations to think about.

1. The playing surface needs to accommodate at least 12 chariots with enough room to move, plus the occasional hazard (Crowd invasion) that may occur.
2. The playing surface and backdrop need to look right.  By that I mean the length and the width need to look in proportion to each other as close as possible.  (The height will have to be kept low enough so you can actually reach inside though)

The figures I am using stand roughly 38-40mm tall from foot to eye.  So, the obvious way to go would be to simply double the playing area for 15-20mm scale figures.  This would give me an area of 180 cm x 90 cm.  So just over 5 1/2 Feet x 2 1/2 feet.

2 1/2 feet wide just doesn’t seem big enough.  With each chariot taking up roughly 4″ X 4″ and knowing that the width is essentially divided by two as they will race up one side, around a turning point and back down the other it really only gives maybe 18″ maximum on each side.  Probably less as any feature to race around will also eat into that space.

With this realisation, it was time to go big or go home.  Time to double the already doubled measurements.

This now gives me a table area of 11 (ish) feet by 5 (ish) feet with the internal size of the track being roughly 9 foot by 4 1/2 foot.

It’s really going to be a big project.

Thankfully I had pretty much already come to the conclusion that this was going to be huge and had set all my printers to the task in hand.

At the moment all the components are loose, I will need to work out a way of turning them into sub-assemblies for storage and to make set-up quicker.  It will also allow me to build smaller playing areas for games with fewer chariots.