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jabbakahut wrote:I never thought of using 1/2"MDF for hills without doing anything else to them, interesting. It looks like you used MDF for the terrain bases as well, you said you got hardboard, I've found hardboard to be a pain, which are you using?

It's what I think is called hardboard - it's shiny on one side and almost cardboard-like on the other, it's a dark brown.

And, yes, I cut it with my jigsaw set to an angle cut to get the rounded edge.

I officially need a jigsaw. Thanks Redbeard, I just love spending money on expensive tools...

Great looking board in a hell of a short amount of time. I love the terrain pieces so far too. Especially the depot, that's probably my fav so far. I've wanted to get my hands on some conex containers for a while now, the one you've used seems to be resin, where'd you pick it up?

It's from Iron Halo, over in New Zealand. I was ordering some bases from them, and noticed that they had this, at a decent price (under $10), and since I was paying shipping anyway, I ordered one. One of those things that you later realize you have lying around when you want to do a new project


And, yes, you need a jigsaw. And a circular saw, a sawzall (reciprocating saw), and a chainsaw. Men are judged on how much stuff they can cut through before they die.

grey_death wrote:I officially need a jigsaw. Thanks Redbeard, I just love spending money on expensive tools...

Just and FYI, you can get a jig saw for less than the cost of a Land Raider from walmart.

So, Sunday and tonight were painting days.

I started by airbrushing base colours onto most of the pieces, and then followed that up by drybrushing metal onto all the metal surfaces. I purposefully avoided rust, because this planet is meant to be really dry, and things don't rust in the desert - they get clogged up with dust and dirt, and very grimy, but they don't rust.

After that, I started picking out details and using a fairly limited palette (Comprised mostly of foundation paints, because I didn't feel like having to go back over stuff - this is terrain, not a golden demon entry), I started to bring the different pieces to life.

After all the details were picked out, I glued the pieces to their bases, and got the airbrush out again, this time using a darker brown to add some shading where the pieces met the bases. Then I used a shade similar to the base, and lightly sprayed over just about everything, to add that dusty, been-in-the-desert look.

Finally, I added water effects over the sludge that's welling up where the pipes go into the ground. It's still drying, and looks white in the picture, but will dry shiny.


Here are the pics:

The cooling tower. I didn't photo this in the construction phase, because it's just a resin piece from armorcast.



The depot:






The drill. I had this copper colour from the craft store and thought these balls were the best place for it.




The gun emplacement:




The Factory:



The generator:




The Hut:




The landing pad. This sort of came to me as I was painting it.






The Shack. Again, this is just a resin piece that I picked up along the way:



Silos:




And here's it all together:






So, next up are some miniature scenery buildings, that I don't have yet (they're en-route), and a windmill that my wife wants to make with me, after she finishes her finals.

Looks like a solid setup, I've got all the different bits it seems you've used, it's like seeing a theoretical build with my stuff, give me different ideas.

Nice airbrushing of the dirt along the bottoms. Would it create a nice splattered effect if you took a brush of generic tan/brown paint, and flicked the bristles at the bottom of the pieces? Just a thought.

Very clean, durable and playable game table. I really like how it came out. It makes for a great themed table. I've been utelizing a cityfight style board for a few years now.

Now, if I can get my house sold and into the larger one, I'll come back and reference your blog for my next game table. I'll have more room for something like you've constructed.

Great work. Thanks for sharing.

Nicely done sir, that not only looks really cool but captures some of the feel of the earlier eras of 40k.

Also thanks for selling me your Daemons codex at Adepticon, that was much appreciated!

Looking great. And you have some very nice scenery to go with an awesome looking board. The different buildings and parts work well together.

Umm errrr This looks vaguely familar.

Looks great. Water effects look very realistic.

Years of great gaming to come on this board.

Love the belly gun on your Gargant too!

Old Man Ultramarine wrote:Umm errrr This looks vaguely familar.

Looks great. Water effects look very realistic.

Years of great gaming to come on this board.

Did I miss something, there was water effects?

WC_Brian wrote:
Also thanks for selling me your Daemons codex at Adepticon, that was much appreciated!

No problem. I was a bit confused when you first asked, but when you explained the plane flight it all made sense. I've been telling people that my army did so badly at the con, I sold the codex.

jabbakahut wrote:

Old Man Ultramarine wrote:Umm errrr This looks vaguely familar.

Looks great. Water effects look very realistic.

Years of great gaming to come on this board.

Did I miss something, there was water effects?

On generator, hut, and silo. Look on ground by pipes. In pictures it's not dry yet, but it's there.

Great terrain pieces and a terrific, cohesive table! The Hut looks like something out of Tanaris in WoW.

I am impressed, you pulled this whole table together so fast and it looks great.

I may need to break out my airbrush that I've never used...

Excellent I really like it!!!

Very nice and clean table. I'd like to play some =I=munda games on it.

Very nice work, clean and effective and very playable - as a small "critique", I think the buildings lack some detail and orky craziness, "story" if you will.

I'm scared to try water effects, seems like they're difficult to pull off, better go search the articles to see if there is any help for me.

Just awesome... I so totally want a hobby room to work in to do stuff like this.

Water effects are actually pretty easy to use. Get the bottle, pour it into the place you want watery. If you want a deeper water, do it in a few layers, not all at once.

Really, there's not much to it.

I didn't go as orky-crazy as I could have, but I wanted the base table functional and ready for play this week. I'm going to be a bit more experimental (and use more bitz) on the Miniature Scenery buildings, once they get here.

Absolutely amazing, great table. Well done for investing so much time on it in one week!!

Quick question - did you use emulsion paint? The same sort of stuff you'd use to paint the interior walls in your house to paint the table top? It looks great.

I love the simple red and blue/turquoise on the terrain, it adds colour and brings out focalpoints in a desert of sand!!

Yeah, the basic paints on the sand boards are house paints. The primer is an outdoor primer, and the top coat is this stuff that's suposed to be washable, so that should be useful.

I picked turquoise and red because on one of my motorcycle trips out to the western US, my wife and I came across this random little set of huts near the vermillion cliffs in Arizona, and they had turquoise paint, over a redish brick. It's also a scheme you see a lot on native American jewelry.

Nice work, very nice. I will be keeping this in mind for when I can finally build a table I dont have to worry about moving every 3 years! I have several of those buildsing you have in route, they are well worth their money and go together easy, I suggest using wood glue in the inside of them before you base them to give them lasting strength. That company makes some really ace stuff. keep us posted as it progresses.

That is a really sweet table. I like all those terrain pieces you made for it.

What can I say very inspired this is definitely something I am going to have a go at

New stuff incoming!

I got my shipment from Miniature Scenery on Thursday. I had ordered three buildings, two towers, and a dice tower. They fit in a remarkably small box.

I put them together, turning one of the watchtowers into a watertower in the process:

This one will be a barracks:



This one is going to be a mek shop:



I've got another that will be a biker bar too. I had some older ork bikes and buggies that are going to be placed around the mek shop and the bar to provide some flavour.




A watch tower:



A water tower:



A dice tower - this works well for rolling. I'm going to do the rolling cup as some sort of pond (or possibly sludge).





I had also gotten a shipment in from GW - I ordered some squigs for a speciality terrain piece.



The squigherd works as follows.
1) Squigherd is difficult and dangerous terrain. Feel free to go into it, but might not be smart.
2) Shooting through squigherd grants a 4+ cover save, like shooting through a unit.
3) At the beginning of each turn, roll a scatter die + 1d6. The squigs move in that direction (on a 'hit' they stand still). The Squigherd will stop one inch away from any model or other terrain piece. Any model inside the squigherd will be dragged along with the squigherd. This counts as moving that turn, and if they are removed from coherency with the rest of their unit, they will have to move back into coherency during their movement phase.


Finally, (or, perhaps, not finally) my wife had her last final on Friday. And, we celebrated our anniversary earlier this week. We put off doing anything for our anniversary until today. When I asked what she wanted to do, she said that because she'd been so preoccupied with her classes lately, she wanted to spend time with me doing one of my hobbies, and that she'd seen the table I was working on, and that she thought it needed a windmill. So, we spend today together building a windmill.



This was a lot of fun. I had to teach her a lot of basic stuff about using the tools, but she got the hang of the dremmel sanding bit quickly, and proved to be an adept hand at making rivets. We designed the watertower to be very triangular. Threes and triangles are integral to most of the design, from the legs, to the housing, to the number of vanes and the shape of the vanes as well. We decided that the windmill is driving a shaft to turn some sort of underground equipment, hence the shaft disappearing into a black box.



The windmill is going to have a special rule too. Shooting through the vanes will result in a 3+ cover save, from either direction, to represent the speed that the vanes are moving at. They don't block line of sight, but they do mess up shots. (The windmill vanes actually spin too)


All the new buildings are now rough-coated and primer, and we'll start painting them tomorrow or Monday night.

Fantastic. I'm very impressed by the speed in which your table is coming along. Can you provide a link to Miniature Scenery, or did I miss that somewhere earlier?