Castle Gate at Dusk
A moated castle at dusk: gatehouse, wall walk, bailey and the keep's great hall.
It builds in your browser in a few seconds, models, lights and miniatures included. No sign-up needed to try it.
The place
Setting: Dusk in light rain, braziers burning on the walls
A castle on a levelled rise ringed by a stone-lined moat: battlemented curtain walls with round towers at the corners, a gatehouse with towers either side and a portcullis in its passage, and a causeway across the moat where the road climbs up from the south. Inside the walls is a bailey of trodden earth and mud with a well, and around it the buildings of a working castle, every one with a roof that lifts in Play and a furnished room beneath: the great hall with a throne on a dais, long tables, a hearth, a chandelier, the lord's clock and his pictures; a three-storey keep tower beside it with the lord's solar on top; stables, a smithy with its forge and grindstone, and barracks.
It is built in three dimensions on purpose: a timber wall walk runs ten feet up along the south wall with stone stairs either side of the gate, braziers burn on it and on the gatehouse, and the ruler charges every climb. Four fighters serve as the garrison, with the lord in his hall and the smith at the forge; a bard, a cleric, a dwarf fighter, an elf ranger, a halfling rogue and a sorcerer make up the party on the causeway; and an orc scout watches from the trees while a ghoul and a zombie wait unseen.
What the recipe places
- 6 floor and road ops
- 11 wall runs
- 84 props, lines and scatters
- 5 lights and effects
- 15 miniatures
Encounters it was built for
- Holding the gate: defenders on the wall walk, attackers on the causeway, the gate passage as the objective.
- A night infiltration over the wall; the top-down view shows the guard routes.
- Parley in the great hall that turns into a fight in the bailey.
- The dead at the door: a ghoul and a zombie test the gate after dark while an orc scouts the road.
- A duel in the hall: the throne, the long tables and the chandelier turn a formal audience into close-quarters fighting.
Tips
- In Play, press U to lift the roofs and see into the hall, the keep and the barracks.
- Place a miniature on the wall walk and drag it; the readout says how many feet up it is.
- Use pings (double-click) to point players at the gatehouse without touching their tokens.
- Use the stone stairs to move minis onto the wall; the ruler reports the 10-foot height on every measurement from below.
- Fog the bailey and the hall at the start of an infiltration and reveal them as the party gets over the wall.
Other starter scenes
The Weary Traveller
A roadside inn at dusk: bar, hearth and long tables, a stranger in the corner.
Hollowdeep Cells
Torchlit stone corridors, a guard room, cells and a treasure vault.
Crypt of the Pale Knight
A moonlit graveyard above a black mere, its crypt standing open and the dead rising.
Ambush on the Forest Road
A felled pine across a forest road at dawn: goblins in the trees, a ford ahead.
Smugglers' Cove
A golden-hour beach: smugglers' bonfire, a boathouse, a sea cave, a ship at anchor.
Neon Alley
A rain-soaked neon street at night: a noodle bar, a corporate checkpoint and a warmech.
Rooftop Run
A cyberpunk heist across rain-slick rooftops: stairs, a gangway, a gap to leap, a mech.
Sunwell Caravanserai
A desert caravanserai by a palm-ringed spring, its market raided by gnolls off the dunes.
Ashgrave Cemetery
A walled cemetery in a storm: a necromancer's circle, ghouls, the dead clawing up.
The Witch of Blackfen
A foggy swamp at dusk: wisps over black pools, a witch's hut, spiders in the dead wood.
Wolf's Tooth Bandit Camp
A bandit palisade in the pines: the chief's hall, campfires, captives, a watchtower.
The Drowned Tower
A wizard's tower on a misty lake isle: standing stones, a drowned causeway, a jetty.
Market Day at Millbrook
A cobbled market square on a bright morning: stalls, a fountain, a church, a smithy.
Frostfall Hamlet
A snowbound hamlet at dusk: a mead hall, a frozen pond and wolves at the palisade.
Raiders' Fjord
A fjord at cold dawn: a longhouse on the shingle, raiders running their longboat ashore.
Free top-down battle map
A flat, gridded version of Castle Gate at Dusk for any other tabletop: straight down, north up, 46 by 52 squares at 70 pixels per 5-foot square, with no miniatures on it. Set your tabletop's grid to 70 px and it lines up.
Free under CC BY 4.0: use it, share it and change it, in paid work too, as long as you credit TerrainTale. Some buildings in it are other artists' CC BY models, credited on the About page.
Questions
Can I change Castle Gate at Dusk after loading it?
Yes. A template is a normal scene once built: paint, drag, delete and add to it, then save it as your own project.
How long does it take to load?
A few seconds. The recipe compiles instantly and the models it uses download from the built-in library on first use, then stay cached.
Can I make my own template?
Write a recipe (see Build with AI) and import it with File ▸ Import Scene JSON, or save any scene as a project and reopen it from the welcome screen.
From the blog
Throne room battle maps: the audience chamber as an arena
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Height and verticality: using the third dimension in combat
Climbing, flying, falling, ranged attacks from above and the rules that govern them — and how to build maps with height that players actually use instead of ignore.
· 7 min read
Castle and siege battle maps: gates, walls and the courtyard fight
How to build a castle map that plays well — the gatehouse, the parapet, the killing ground, the postern — and how to run a siege without tracking a hundred soldiers.
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All articles on battle maps, grid rules and running the game
Open Castle Gate at Dusk on your table
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