The Warhammer Alliance packs contain everything you need to get a taste of building, painting and playing Warhammer. I'm concentrating on the Warhammer 40k part of the pack...

excerpts from the Mission Brief

... Suddenly, the ground collapses and your unit tumbles into a chasm. As the dust clears, you discover a cold and unwelcoming chamber lit with a sickly green glow. It appears to be a Necron tomb! ...

... Necron Warriors in stasis chambers line walls. ... the Canoptek Scarabs will surely start the awakening process any minute! ...

Each activity booklet comes with a battle mat and they can be combined to make larger maps...

I'd like to build a new battle mat/board, replace the cardboard Necrons with real miniatures and replace the stasis cards with something more fitting. Sounds simple enough :-)

I'm on a budget though. That'll make things trickier.

For the Necron miniatures, I'll be keeping my eye out for bargains at Mirfield Miniatures. We've picked up some bargains here before - Orc boyz for 50p a miniature.

For the battle mat base, I'll have to dig around the local DIY places for some offcuts going cheap.

Now to work out what a Necron tomb should look like...

Searching the internet for inspiration, most images show (dark) grey, pyramidical structures embossed with glowing green symbols and tracks. That works for me.

The Necron Stasis Chambers still remain a mystery. I'll have to design them myself. They need to "line the walls" and I'd like to be able to place a Necron miniature inside.

A few more design considerations...

The materials will need to be child friendly, they shouldn't shatter into sharp parts when dropped.

Either durable in case they are dropped or easily and cheaply reproducible should they get damaged.

Easily stored.

Wish list...

Reconfigurable / Modular.

Glowing parts - some nice LEDs might do the trick here.