What do you mean my Manticore is out of range? An Apocalypse table project WIP

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**streamdragon**

So this Saturday will be my larges Apocalypse game yet. 7,000 points per side, Eldar vs. Orks (me) and Chaos. With forces that plentiful, I knew my regular 8'x4' gaming table wouldn't be enough. Going by the suggested board size in the Apoc. book, we'd need roughly 70 square feet of gaming space. In true fashion, I procrastinated until this week, giving me a few days to:

1. Build the table
2. Create enough terrain
3. Create 2 objective markers (each player is supposed to bring 2 themed to their army, but I don't actually see it happening

)
4. Finish my nob bikers

The table itself was the highest priority. Building on my existing table, I decided on a 2'x8' section to go parallel, and a 6'x4' section to go perpendicular at the base. The resulting board is 12'x6'; 72 sq. feet of Apocalyptic battle field. For ease of later storage, I thought it would be easiest to build 2'x4' sections and bolt/clamp them together to form the playing surface.

I created a bunch of these:

to attach to this table:

Rather than have to cut 20 legs, I decided to bolt some of the boards together:

So they could share legs. These next two show the rough total area the table will take up. Fortunately I have plenty of space on my basement, although it does mean that some of the other furniture had to get pushed against the wall out of the way.

I was working on it until about 1am this morning. Tonight I'll bolt the remaining sections together and put it on legs. It stands about 18 inches tall, so reaching across it shouldn't be an issue.

Up tonight! Final legs, polystyrene topper with hopefully a river planned out. I'm also planning on creating a few loose forests / hills, as I don't think our current terrain supply will be enough. I'm also hoping by keeping this log it will help me stay focused and productive.

**Fallenbourne**

Now thats a gaming table. Can't wait to see what it looks like finished

**johnscott10**

Fallenbourne wrote:Now thats a gaming table. Can't wait to see what it looks like finished

couldnt agree more lol

**Acardia**

Now that is freaking sweet.

**madgrotbob**

The terrain part is the bit that with kill you.

I looks like you've got a fair bit of work ahead, Good Luck

**Sandyman11**

If you're going to struggle with terrain, you could always incorporate craters into the polystyrene topper for instant cover. Also, when you buy your poly, buy an extra sheet and make gak loads of hills, the more levels the better! Remember, a hot wire cutter and two open windows/doors are your friends here

If you're putting trees on the board, I'd do as the book suggests and clump them together to make a mini wood or two, looks better than lots of stands of 2-3 trees IMO.
The river idea sounds ace by the way, good luck!

**Space_Potato**

Good luck dude.

May the farce be with you.

S_P

**xxBlazinGhostxx**

Holy. Crap. Love it!

**Ktulhut**

Dude, you've got stripper poles in your house!

It's going to be an amazing table though, I've never seen one that ambitious outside of a tourney or GT.

**Thortek**

Friggin' Sweet!

**revackey**

Wow nice! Cant wait to see more!

**Menelker**

Yeh for more terrained gaming boards!

**streamdragon**

Thanks for the support folks! It's definitely a bit bigger of a project than I'd anticipated, but I think I'm up to the task.

madgrotbob wrote:The terrain part is the bit that with kill you.

I looks like you've got a fair bit of work ahead, Good Luck

Right now our collection consists of 2 hills, 1-3 buildings, a GW forest and the crashed-rhino-forest-thing. We also have a crater set, but with the number of vehicles I expect will be wrecked (I'm playing Orks after all!

) I figure'd we'd save em for that. The terrain is definitely going to kick my butt though, but at least I have an Imperial Sector for some easy (if slightly time consuming) building construction.

Sandyman11 wrote:If you're going to struggle with terrain, you could always incorporate craters into the polystyrene topper for instant cover. Also, when you buy your poly, buy an extra sheet and make gak loads of hills, the more levels the better! Remember, a hot wire cutter and two open windows/doors are your friends here
If you're putting trees on the board, I'd do as the book suggests and clump them together to make a mini wood or two, looks better than lots of stands of 2-3 trees IMO.
The river idea sounds ace by the way, good luck!

As I'll mention below, I ended up with a bunch of extra polystyrene, and yet not enough for the topper. Hills are definitely high on my priority list because of how little time they take. There's also a hill by my house that I really want to recreate for this battle. I'll have to get a picture of it tomorrow. Despite a few setbacks, I did get a couple forests started... sorta.

Ktulhut wrote:Dude, you've got stripper poles in your house!

It's going to be an amazing table though, I've never seen one that ambitious outside of a tourney or GT.

Hehe, the poles are actually support struts for the house. I suppose someone could dance on em though...

Yeah, this is definitely one of the biggest projects I've taken on. I'm not much for the painting side of the hobby, generally, but I do love doing terrain.

Anywho! Sadly I don't have a great update for this evening, as there were several setbacks that I think are going to end up being costly.

Setback 1: I'm a git and didn't cut enough legs; I need at least 1 more, preferably 4. It won't take me long to cut them, but I don't think the neighbors or my family would appreciate my firing up the miter saw at 9pm. I can cut these pretty quickly tomorrow but it does prevent me from laying the polystyrene and starting to sketch out the river placement.

Setback 2: MDF board freakin sucks to cut. Seriously, what do you people use for your terrain bases? The stuff I picked up is the same composition as peg-board, but lacks all the little holes. I tried my jigsaw, my dremel with a cutting bit, a hand saw... nothing seemed to work. Okay, the dremel worked, it just made a humongous mess with dust getting everywhere. I did get one cut, and had an old base I'd cut from foam board. I had originally planned to use it for a bunker, but never got around to building the bunker. So those two at least got cut and are currently getting sand glued down:

For trees I raided my local Michael's crafts store and picked up a wide assortment of fake plants

These sponge/fan type plants looked a little too wild to pass up:

I figure I'll cut the stem down near the base, make an interesting set of alien plants.

So tomorrow is definitely going to be crunch day for me. I have to run back to the hardware store for more Polystyrene foam. I need at least 2 more pieces, but I'll probably grab 4 more. Some of my older pieces of foam aren't really in great shape, so instead of being used as the main surface, they'll end up getting cut up into hills, blocks, ruins, etc.

**MagickalMemories**

If you've got it, use a circle saw on the mdf.

Also, get those lazy-git friends of yours over there to help you! LOL

Eric

**grob the immortal grot**

thats one big table...

**1-UP**

Huh, I use a jigsaw all the time to cut my MDF. The trick I found was to use a small-toothed/finish blade and to clamp the board down to make it stable. It does need a quick sanding afterwards on the edge though, but a dremel with a drum works slick as can be.

I'll chime in on the whole terrain bit. We used an 8x8 table (in retrospect 8x6 or 12x6 would have been better) and it's astonishing how quickly the good terrain gets gobbled up. Get those git friends of yours to make a couple of pieces apiece or you end up pretty sparse.

**Element206**

Ok, so i see the Manticore reference in the title of this post....but then you say your playing Eldar vs. Orks. Seriously one of you need a IG army for a table this big. Id take plent of deathstrike and manticore tanks too! By the time anyone even gets within range it will be turn 5-6 already.....the perfect setup for a deathstrike!

**Battle Brother Lucifer**

This table is going to be amazing!

**CrazyMez**

Your gonna need a crane to reach the middle of that bad boy!! Good work though

**Mewiththeface**

MY suggest for the fan sponge things, glue them in tight rows like a bees nest or a cooling vent on say like a motorcycle engine.

**streamdragon**

Thanks for the support folks

Element206 wrote:Ok, so i see the Manticore reference in the title of this post....but then you say your playing Eldar vs. Orks. Seriously one of you need a IG army for a table this big. Id take plent of deathstrike and manticore tanks too! By the time anyone even gets within range it will be turn 5-6 already.....the perfect setup for a deathstrike!

I'm looting one

Not really, I just need something with a super long range to illustrate the size of the table.

CrazyMez wrote:Your gonna need a crane to reach the middle of that bad boy!! Good work though

Thanks

We actually decided to go with a table only 6 feet wide instead of the suggested 8 specifically for that reason. I'm not very tall (5'7" or so) and I can reach at least half way across the table from the long edge fairly easily. The foam topper is framed in, so we don't have to worry about it shifting during the game.

Mewiththeface wrote:MY suggest for the fan sponge things, glue them in tight rows like a bees nest or a cooling vent on say like a motorcycle engine.

That is now the plan for them!

Updates!

Got the frame assembled and the pink foam in:

used corner molding turned upward to hold the polystyrene foam in place, so we don't have to worry about bumping it. I was going to water down elmer's glue and pour sand all over the whole thing, but I went with this instead:

It's green terrain paper normally used by folks making model trains. Much love to MooseCaboose in Eldersburg, MD for saving me a ton of time on that. As I keep working on this table I've been working on fluff for it, but long story short I decided part of the board is the edge of an abandoned Imperial City, so rather than spreading the paper matting all over the table I stacked another piece of foam at the far end and painted a large area black.

You may notice a pink stripe between the grass and the city area, that's for the road that will be running width wise across the board. I didn't want to paint the green, so I gave myself a little space.

One of my forest-esque pieces came through, sorry for the blurry photos:

I've got another two pieces of MDF board cut that will end up similarly, and a third piece that will end up with the fans on it. I'm about to go get the glue going for those, then cut some hills out of my polystyrene. I have paint and fake moss for them, so hopefully they won't take too long. After that it's cleanup and sleep!

**johnscott10**

Haha makin real progress, keep it up!

**xxBlazinGhostxx**

Lookin' good!

**Jericho**

Amazing, looks like its gona be a b*tch to move/dismantle. lol

**Dakka_Dok**

*blieping* awesome!!!

I might trim the grass to make it a bit more natural.
But wow! I can't wait to see this finished.

**YmeLocSquirrel256**

Element206 wrote:Ok, so i see the Manticore reference in the title of this post....but then you say your playing Eldar vs. Orks. Seriously one of you need a IG army for a table this big. Id take plent of deathstrike and manticore tanks too! By the time anyone even gets within range it will be turn 5-6 already.....the perfect setup for a deathstrike!

Well, 7000pts a side, 3500 between your orks

and chaos

I presume? Well unless your opponent has been a slight fool, expect at least a couple of sunstorms

, and infantry and other stuff here and there.

.

Back to the board, this just looks amazing.

But probably so large and heavy to store AFAIK.

Still, I'm eager to see what more your going to put on this board, or carve out for a small canyon etc.

**SilverMK2**

I have to say you avoided what I think is the worst thing about apoc tables - people keep them at 4ft wide!

Loving the supersized table.

**Mewiththeface**

Wow! You have TWO stripper poles in your house?!? Lucky

**Element206**

Mewiththeface wrote:Wow! You have TWO stripper poles in your house?!? Lucky

--

Love it!

**CrazyMez**

Why dont you play epic on that table?

I wish i was in the states so I could have a game on that.