In my campaign, I am currently running a modified version of the Vessel of Stars adventure. As part of the adventure, a group of mercenaries take over a tavern and disguise themselves as the owners, in order to ambush the PCs. I was really happy with the way the set up came out, so I snapped a few pictures.
The map is a tavern from Paizo's excellent Village GameMastery Map Pack. The figures are all D&D minis, except for the one rogue who is from a Star Wars miniatures set. The "Tavern Brawler" were unsuspecting drunken truck drivers and locals who got caught in the crossfire when the battle broke out. During the fight they were running around, sometimes helping, sometimes hindering, and in one case, dying horribly.
Overhead view:
Hero point of view:
The fight eventually spilled out into the parking lot of the roadhouse (after an enemy wizard blasted a hole in the wall with a lightening bolt) and led to a high speed car chase, but I forgot to take more pictures as the battle went on and the set expanded. Better quality images are below.
Brilliant, frelling brilliant!! Do the DDMs fit underneath the stands? If so I might just have to go buy a bunch of pizzas for the stands or just convince my group to not throw thiers out over the next week.
My group uses a plain battlemat and miniatures; terrain is drawn in pen. Even with such a simple setup, our group gets bored and distracted while waiting for the DM to draw the encounter. How do you have such elaborate setups without it detracting from the game? Do you set them up beforehand?