New table, new terrain! [Part 1]

So, along with constructing a new table to game on I will be expanding and updating our range of terrain.  What's the use of a pretty new table if the terrain you're using is quite rough around the edges.  A lot of what we use will still be good, but I will need to touch it up and re-polish it so to speak.

So, the first new piece of terrain will be this small rocky outcropping which should look nice out in the wastes/plains.  My friend gave me that old sentinel cockpit some time ago and I'm finally painting it up to use on this piece of terrain.  As it is we don't have much pure LOS blocking stuff, so that's why I made this in such a fashion that you can't place troops on it.

Here's a view from the other side, if you can zoom in you can probably see the pilot's head is a skull and his left arm is all bones from one of my brother's skeleton spearmen.

There's even a wee little well spring up in the top there. This thing was made mostly out of pink foamboard and some rocks, gaps were filled with air-drying clay, the same as I used on the table.  Painting the rock I started out with Vallejo Green-Grey dry brushed on there rather liberally, then I put on some codex gray which I mixed with black and finished with straight codex gray.  The grass is a mixture I made up using GW green and dry grasses as well as some of the old style flock mixed in.  I would put this down randomly and then add pure green or dry to other spots to get some variation.  The dirt and adhesive for the flock was some thick acrylic medium mixed with brown paint and watered down a bit.  All in all It worked well, better than many experiences I have had using elmers.  It dried a lot faster and saved me a step of painting the ground brown or adding some other surfacer.

The water was made with clear resin and I dropped in some green fuzzy stuff which looks like algae and some leaves which I also scattered all about. The grass is horsehair which was inserted with an old sewing pin and then trimmed to varying heights.

I've also got a trio of foam bunkers ready for cutting, painting, and basing once I get this one done.  There's also a bunch of foam terrain at Kevin's house which I will be painting up soon as well.

Stay tuned for more goodness.

Building a Gaming Table [Part 2]

And so the adventure continues!
First up this week I added the sides to the table.  This consists of 3 1/2 inch pine board, screwed into the plywood, which will form the border of the table and a lip to keep stuff (dice & models) from sliding off of the table.  It also added a lot of rigidity to the edges of the board.

Next up, for further support we added trusses to each end of the table where the most overhang was.  It took away whatever slack that remained.  We also filled all the countersunk screw holes with some elmers wood filler in preparation for staining next week.

Next,  it was time to install the foam-board.  Turns out the people who make this have completely forgone all reason and sized the boards to 2ft and 1/8in.  Leaving us with an extra 1/4in of foam when we tried to place it in the table.  Absolute madness.  I cut out the slot for the river on the near half of the board, you can see it's in 2 separate pieces there, and we set to work gluing it all down.

For extra heresy repulsion the table will have this permanent Aquila beneath it, which will hopefully help with my dice rolls. [Probably not]

Now, we wait.  The glue had to dry some before we [I, mostly]  did anything else.  So we put some useless books to use weighing it all down.  While the rest of those people were talking and slacking off I began to draw up a more formal plan for the table going onward, which I left at Kevin's house, so no pic.

However, you can't just work without having any fun, and so the paraLOLogram was born from the cut out river section.  Andy here is a very skittish lad and is using it for protection.

Once the glue set a bit I set to work adding some light texture to the board using some air drying clay. It's very subtle and isn't noticeable yet, but I will hope it will break up the flatness of the board once it is finished.  I also installed the arches where the water will go underground, you can sorta make them out if you zoom in.  Smeared the clay over the whole board in hopes it will be a better surface for the flocking to stick to once it comes to doing that.  Did the same to some hill/dunes we made a while back.  Was a dirty job, as you can see from my hand.

That's it for this week, come back again next week for another table update.

Building a Gaming Table [Part 1]

For many years we have been talking about building a table for our gaming group.  About organizing the godawful amount of miniatures in our host's basement.  Well, last week I finally made up a list of stuff I may need to build a table and Kevin, the person whose house we play at, said he would bankroll the whole thing.
Not that this hasn't all been done before.  But today I called him up and said we should go to Home Depot and buy this stuff.  So  that's exactly what happened.  We bought it and loaded it up in and on my Jeep.

A few feet of twine later and we were all set for the ride back to his house.  Not a very comfortable ride having  to hold the stuff on the roof down when it's windy and 30 and you have no room to move about thanks to the 2x4s, but hey we got back safely.

So, as I began to cut up lumber, as seen below, Kevin and another gaming buddy of ours, Andy, began the process of organizing the hordes, or hoards, of models and armies spread throughout the basement.  So much for playing some BFG.

Kevin's father has a good selection of tools and is kind enough to let us use them, with one rule, no drinking and power tools.  Reasonable enough and not something we were planning on mixing anyway. First thing to do was make the legs, because every table needs legs...

Here you can better see the frame, still needs a bit more under the plywood though.  Some drink holders too, and a shelf there on the bottom for storage of something.

And the top, we've got some nice 2" pink insulation foam as the gaming surface and some 1"x5" pine board for around the outside. This will leave a nice border and keep what's on the table, on the table. Still a lot of work to be done, but it was very nice to finally get started on something like this.  We're going to leave the board at 8'x4' for when we decide to play larger games, but will have some surface feature which will mark off 2' from either end for a 6'x4' play area as well.

To be continued...