How to win at Maelstrom

At my club we play a lot of Maelstrom of war missions. It's about a 50/50 split with eternal war and the annual club tournament uses book Maelstrom missions. I've read a lot of commentary complaining about Maelstrom, saying that it comes down to luck of the draw too often. That hasn't been my experience at all. In fact, I don't think I've had a single Maelstrom game come down to luck of the draw. However, you need to build armies that are suitable to Maelstrom. If you bring something that is fundamentally an eternal war army, like Deathwing, Death-stars or a firebase, you are going to lose. Pretty much anything that is designed to kill stuff rather than score is going to have a hard time unless you can reliably table your opponent by turn 5. In this article I've assembled some of the insights I've gained playing around 30 book Maelstrom games. Feel free to disagree with me.

My first display board

I wanted to make a display board for the club tournament because it was my first one with this club. I thought it would ingratiate me with some of the old hands and I also wanted to make some commitment to encourage myself to keep going. I also figured a display board was my best bet for actually walking away with some prize (which turned out to be true). This post is about the making of said board, with pictures!