New table, new terrain! [Part 7]

Another week, another post.  This time, more terrain for our new gaming table.  First up we have the 2 ponds which I started a while ago and finished about a week and a half ago.  Really like how they came out and how they look.  The most time consuming part was the tufts of tall grass each needing to be drilled, then rolled and glued into place.  Each has 3 little plasticard fish hiding around the weeds or grass.  Finished it off with some printed, laser-cut lily pads.

Here's a shot of pond 1.

And here is pond 2.  The resin really works well for water effects.

This Sunday we made it over to Kevin's for a game night finally.  While my brother fought his necrons against  Chris' Tau/Eldar alliance I painted up some more terrain.  First we have a building from Pegasus.  Lots of grays dry brushed on here.  A nice checkerboard floor too.

Here's a view of the outside, which has a little Chaos graffiti.

Here's the next building I painted, one from the cities of death sets.  Lots of details to pick out on these and it took a while to finish.  There will be a tree in that small square once I get one for it.

Here's the inside.

Finally I dry brushed all of the foam terrain here was left to paint.  There were 2 small ruin pieces, the large ruin, and 3 urban wreak markers.

That's all for this now, working on a Leman Russ at the moment so you can expect that in the next few days. As always comments and critique are highly appreciated.

New table, new terrain! [Part 5]

So, another week and some more progress on the buildings.  All I could really do was glue down some texture and so that's what I did.  Step one is to brush on some glue.

Step two is to pour on some flock and do it 12 times until all of the buildings are done....  It was rather repetitive and took a good amount of time to do this step.  I had time to do more work but the elmer's take so much time to dry that there wasn't time to prime once it was done.

This weekend I will get the priming done and then we will be trying out 6th edition or playing some more Mordheim. While I was working the rest of the lads were playing some Mordheim when this happened. Yeah, sort that out for yourself.  I tried to make the table pretty "tiltproof"  guess I failed...

Also, another a member of our group has returned to us after a while away from gaming.  He brought 2 Leman Russ tanks which I bought from him to use with my Forge World Turrets.  I need to strip them to repaint them so for tonight they are soaking in Simple Green.  This is the first time I am using it so I really hope it works out.  From what I understand it's the best way to strip plastics.  I am also going to strip my Baneblade for repainting if this proves to work out.

Stay tuned, next week should see some start to the painting of all of the buildings.

New table, new terrain! [Part 3]

Okay, so we've had these ruins for quite some time, so they are not technically "new" but they will seem like new when I get through with them! Step one is basing them all.  I think we have a total of 12 plastic buildings.  So this will be no small feat.  So we collected most of them here for viewing.

Next we had to cut up the hardboard which was purchased with the rest of the table supplies a while back.  My brother did not come with us today so I was forced to have Andy and Kevin help me maneuver the sheet over the table saw.  As a result, some of the edges are not the straightest possible though they will do fine for terrain.  Kevin also had a knack of pushing the material into the blade and pinching it, of course he would not admit to it.  The problem mysteriously vanished when Andy held the outside edge. Hmm...

Once I had the strips of a couple widths cut I could manage most of the further cutting on my own and measured and cut out the pieces for each building.

The next step was to take the buildings off of their old cardboard bases, clean them up a bit, make any repairs, add any extra details, or anything else that needed to be done.  So in letting Andy use my hobby knife he decided to use it to block a smack for some wise talk.  Absent mindedness is not a good thing when handling sharp objects.  There's a reason I used all the power tools.  So, I get a nice 1 in wide gash in my wrist.

After I tended to my wound I finished what I could on our chapel.  It needs a roof still, and the second layer shall be removable so that the interior can be accessed.  I will probably also make some pews and an altar and such for it.

The buildings got glued down to their new hardboard bases and that was pretty much all the work there was to do.  Of course we had the Stanley Cup game playing on the laptop, if you could call it a game...

So, we finished up with a game of Dust: Warfare.  150 pts Andy vs. I, Axis Vs. Axis.  We played corner deployment, secured area, and the one where you get to the enemy deployment.  In the end it was a draw.  We each killed one enemy unit of Battle Grenadiers with neither of us making the enemy's deployment with any units.  Mostly due to the lines of minefields we laid everywhere.  It was still fun, the fortifications were an interesting addition, and we caught a mistake or so more in how we have been playing.

Next time we're there I will be cleaning all of the buildings, as they are rather dusty.  I will also try to do most, if not all of the groundwork and flocking.  If I have time I will add any extra details and to the base coats of spraypaint.  We'll see.  I think painting all this terrain is going to take even more time than building the table.  I still have other terrain to finish, like the sentinel piece and a ruined land raider.  Some of the older pieces need a retouching as well and we still need more scatter terrain and barricades.  A lot of work to finish, so stay tuned!

Building a Gaming Table [Part 5]

So, it's been a few weeks since the last table update but that certainly does not mean I was not working on it.  The week before last was just not visually productive enough to really warrant a dedicated post.
That Sunday began with the observation of some technical difficulties.  The resin shrunk much too much ended up looking like the picture below.  It lifted from the bottom in some places, shrunk away from the right side and lost much of its gloss.

The main work was applying the clearcoat to the table.  I put down three coats during the time I was there and used about a can and a third.  Each coat only took a few minutes to do but I waited about 30-45 minutes between each coat.  The matte finish was sufficiently matte and it did not alter the appearance of the table's surface in any appreciable manner.

After that was done I used some water based water effects to fix up the river.  I mixed in some green and brown paints to murk it up a bit, overall I actually prefer these colors to the original blue.  It really looks like an algae/waste filled river.

After I did that is when Kevin and I played our first game of Dust: Warfare, which has a battle report here.  These guys are my Heavy Recon Grenadiers watching over the bridge.

This last week began with some more water effects to texture what was done last week.  Next it was on to adding some static grass to the wasteland.  I used a dark green and a dark tan grass put down with some watered down Elmer's.  I mixed the two colors up and added them in different patterns to make it a little less uniform looking.

I left the big clumps until the glue is almost dry, the additional weight helps push more of the grass into the glue and helps more fibers get stuck well enough to give better coverage.

While that was drying I began work on the cup holders and my brother got to work on staining the wooden parts of the table.  Looks really nice.

Here's a closeup of the cup holders, gotta add some more support to the front and round the edges so that shins and drink holders are both better protected.

I also ended up adding some water to a few of the deeper craters.  I guess it has rained recently on the tableland.  It will help models stand better on them and help reduce tilts of the dice.

Here we are with the pretty much finished urban side of the board.

Now there's the wasteland, the excess grass has been vacuumed away and it's ready for some gaming!  We played a couple more games of Dust, but I can't wait to really play some large games over the entire thing.
There's still some work to do, but this table is pretty much done.  Most of the work time will now start going into upgrading our terrain set to be more practical and better to look at.

Building a Gaming Table [Part 4]

Here we are again with another update on the gaming table!  This week was really painting heavy with lots of drybrushing and some detailing too.  First I started with painting the desert/waster part of the table.  We used craft store paints to do this, a medium brown, then a light brown, and finally a tan.  I also painted up the corresponding dunes and one of the wreck markers in the same colors.

Here's a shot of it complete, with light highlights in the areas that I built up with the clay.  I also resprayed with the dark brown spray paint in the path where the bridge crosses the river.

Next, I drybrushed the urban parts of the board.  Used the same craft paints but a medium gray and a light gray.  Did all of the drybrushing with a cheap 2 inch natural, soft brush.  They're basically the cheapest you can get at Home Depot but are very forgiving on the amount of paint on the brush and cover very well for this application.

I then painted the roads with the medium gray, but more solidly.  I also mixed the medium and light grays to varying hues to add some variations to the road.

Once that was done it was time to detail the road.  This started with detailing the craters with some light gray highlights and some soot marks.  It also involved adding some lines to the road.  Had to start by masking them off.

Then I painted them on unevenly with some yellow paint.  When I do lines like this I don't paint it to cover it completely but only lightly so it looks worn out.

Here we see the results of this with some stop lines added as well.  The river's base colors were also done and the resin mixed and poured in.  I have some water based water effects which I will make look muddy and add to texture the surface more.  Should also make the water look more natural and dirty.

Here's a shot of what I have done so far.  I also painted the "Techno Bridge" while waiting for the river's paint to dry.

So, should have everything pretty much wrapped up by next time.  Cup holders, finish the river, seal the whole thing, and add some static grass spots.  It will need to be stained as well but my brother is going to do that while I work on terrain.  Finishing all of our terrain and building more will be the next big step for this project.  That's already begun in my other series New Table, New Terrain!

Thanks for stopping by.