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My modular cave complex and gaming board


>Dakka Gallery on this project<
Welcome!
This is a game board I am working on. It was designed to be a modular dungeon complex for dungeon-crawler or skirmish games, but is big enough for any large 40k battle. At the moment it covers little over 1.5 square meters. There are 154 10cm by 10cm tiles and over a hundred loose wall sections. There are Three types of wall sections: Stalagmite/stalactite sections, Burial sections and arches. The Bulk of the sculpted sections were cast with "Lafarge" Dentstone and then painted with colored, polyester casting-resin. The resin adds extra strength and toughness and seeps 1mm into the casts. The Dentstone proved quite tough and only a few stalagmites with bubbles near the tips broke.

Tiles:
The tiles are all fragmented to distract the eye from their borders and made to fit together in a way as pleasing as possible. They are built from 10mm plaster-board fragments I textured individually attached to an MDF backing. They are all 10cm by 10cm and the backs are pre-flocked so I may turn them upside down for a Forrest board. The sections with lava are made in four types that line up along a point halfway (5cm) along an edge. Corner sections of 90 degrees and 270 degrees, 180 degree shore sections, full lava sections and bridge sections.

Dark Arts Miniatures Lava Tutorial I referenced I still have three stages of painting left to complete the lava.

Walls/ dividers:
There are "U" and "L" shaped stalactite and stalagmite sections, Walls with pillars, Sepulchers, and enclaves with Sarcophagi. These walls can be placed any way and are attached to MDF bases that form neat corridors and rooms. There are also a fair amount of loose pillars and cave structures to place in gaps or add obstruction.

Additional:
Coffins and Sarcophagi have loose lids and can be placed accordingly. Arches may be placed around edges of table or in accordance with a 40k open plan landscape.

Future additions:
I also plan on making more lava sections and a number of craters in the exact shape of blast templates. These may be swapped out with solid tiles to illustrate "thin crust" lava land rules: Anywhere a blast template hits, that then becomes lava. The Lava also needs another three stages of painting. The first four stages took me a very long time as the "solid" tiles also have many cracks and as I've mentioned there are 154 total.
Large and small bridges and stack-able levels for Mordheim type battles and for large vehicle crossings.
Staircases, Strong-points and towers.
Chaos Portal; For the well-dressed dungeon.
A modular Dark-elf Fortress for an "Underdark" setting.

Storage:
I built three huge drawers under my work table to house this project before I started, I still need to build two large carry-cases for transport. The wall sections fit together and are based on concentric "U" and "L" shaped MDF pieces that fit one inside each other from large to small. The Tiles stack and the arches lie flat on each other. The top Drawer is for my minis.

Thank you
superscenic


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o
m
g


t
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a
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is awesome.....

woo 50 posts!!!


M.K

I think that the board is amazing. I personally love the customisability of it. How many 10x10cm squares did you make it out of?

Gathering Storm wrote:I think that the board is amazing. I personally love the customisability of it. How many 10x10cm squares did you make it out of?

I have got 154 at the moment. I still want to make more lava and shore sections. I also want to make lava filled craters that correspond with 40k blast and barrage templates. That way I can make up "Thin Crust" Lava-land rules that replace solid crust with lava wherever a template hit. Alternatively I can make larger sections of 20x20 or 40x40 or 40x10 for walls, fortresses or stretches of lava. I intend to base all my mini's (except wood elves) like this.

The tiles can be flipped around for a green flocked grass.

Thank you kindly for the compliments, Matt.Kingsley and Gathering Storm

superscenic

You sir are amazing. You should just...do something cool because that seriously kicks ass.

Wow!
what kind of time have you put into making this?
and what are you useing to texture the tiles? the floor ones are amazing!!

Igice wrote:Wow!
what kind of time have you put into making this?
and what are you useing to texture the tiles? the floor ones are amazing!!

This took me a month, I built it to win a Terragenesis competition. I wanted to win because I wanted to build a fortress for casting and wanted the theme to be 1 mold and 1 cast. I missed submission by 15 minutes, PM'ed the Administrator, was denied and threw temper tantrum.

A great way to do quick easy rock texture is to take Plasterboard or Drywall wet the one side, peel off the wet paper, and then scrub it with a seriously stiff wirebrush. The wires follow the same scoring marks then creating parallel "channels" which look seriously cool when you drybrush them. The Plasterboard is too soft for long term abuse by itself so it must be basecoated in slightly diluted PVA glue or like I did: impregnated with Polyester resin.

clevahname wrote:You sir are amazing. You should just...do something cool because that seriously kicks ass.

I shall now do something seriously cool... when I think of something.

Thank You!

superscenic

Holy cow, this is pretty epic, really creepy, very much like a Dante-like nightmare vision. Pretty incredible work. It must be intimidating for opponents to conduct battles on this!

Hi Superscenic

Love what you have made there.
But please could you not type in pretty colours.
I get the lava font colour concept, but I am really struggling to read it and have had to stop.
Thanks

Gratz on the board, looks ace!

O...M...G...

How does something that awesome come into existence...

Hi Superscenic

many thanks for altering the font!
much appreciated

Doesn't get any less impressive with subsequent viewings


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ps The tutorial is timely as I intend to do a lava base for an Anima Tactics figure

Hmm.




I think, i might have just poo'd a little.

Shouldn't have had that coffee


Thats truly an amazing board, and i particularly love the customization of the board. You can truly have a unique set up each game.

And its so damn detailed! Each time I look at it, i see more.

So much win, great job.

Im having warm tingling feelings imagining a game of HeroQuest on that board.

As wicked nice as that board is i can't help but think it must take some time setting up

Make time Igice, you just have to make time for some things cos they are so worth it

Hehe! with 2 kids aged 5 and under time is a limited quantity
but that is deffenitly worth it, it would just take me 2 days to get it done!!!

Can imagine the little ones playing with the tiles and deconstructing the board quicker than you can put it together

Pretty much!! Looking forward to some more pics on this!

Updated version I assembled for the 2011 40K Nationals (South Africa) on this project on this project.

Low angle corner shot
corner shot high ungle
south view high angle
north view high angle
Some Space wolves
Space wolves different angle



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My Fire Node with spiral staircase and occult inscribed platform.

superscenic wrote:
Updated version I assembled for the 2011 40K Nationals (South Africa) on this project on this project.



My Fire Node with spiral staircase and occult inscribed platform.

Wow Diablo 2 flashback.

Great work

Absolutely mind-blowing. It's obviously a labour of love, and I hope you have hundreds of great adventures with it. Totally jealous of your kids - I'd have killed to have my dad produce things like this

Exalted!