I like levels with a lot of height to them. Vast changes in elevation are appealing to the eyes and make for more interesting battles. Unfortunately, I only own two Master Sets (one Rise of the Valkyrie and one Swarm of the Marro) so building tall maps proved difficult.

I did have one tool in my arsenal to use in my battle for scale – the Fortress of the Archkyrie expansion set. I started working on designs that used the castle pieces, not as fortresses or strongholds, but as supporting columns. This way I could achieve the height I wanted without sacrificing my precious terrain tiles.

My first map to use this concept was the Long Bridge Battlefield. This one remains one of my favorite maps mainly because of the scale and playability on various levels. I wasn’t sure if the bottom part of the board would see any play at all, but with the strategic placement of...

I used to play only official battlefield scenarios produced by Hasbro, and that kept me satisfied for a long time. At the time, I figured I didn’t have what it took to design and write great scenarios, so I didn’t even bother. When I started looking online for more battlefield/scenarios, I found a great number of player-created battlefields. There were a couple of issues I had with most of the custom battlefields:

1) They were just that – battlefields. No scenarios, just build instructions. You had to just build it and then figure out what you were going to do with it.

2) The quality was poor. They didn’t look or read like the official scenarios. I really liked how the official scenarios fit into the world of Valhalla and had a story behind them.

3) The battlefields were unbalanced, unfair, and/or boring. Either the terrain gave unfair advantage to one side or the maps were insipidly symmetrical and without purpose.

I sought...