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My son recently acquired the Island of Blood set, and needs to either buy or have me make some movement trays. Regardless which option, what 25mm square tray patterns should we make for the most common (Calvary I got figured out) Elven & Skaven infantry formations? 10 x 2 row? 5 x 5 row? 4x4 row? etc.

Thanks

For my latest unit (30 GW warriors), I built 3 5x2 trays that I've been very happy with. It makes moving through different formations much easier and isn't all that hard to move other wise. I'd suggest something modular for the larger formations that might expect to reform once or twice.

I make my movement trays outa sprue plastic and model boxes

Spue and box movement trays are AWESOME, just base them like the models and they look amazing.

For your actual question however do you plan on expanding your collection? The skaven will probably be 5 wide except if you get a lot more you might want to go horde at 10 wide.

For HE right now you could make everything 5 wide as well. The only exception is if you expand that army many people deploy the special units SM, WL, and PG in a 7 wide formation for more attacks.

I made a bunch of small ones - 100mm x 40mm - and just use several of them for large units. You can go from Horde formation for max attacks to 5-wide for max ranks easily.

Common formations are simply 5-wide and however many ranks deep (you need to be 5-wide for ranks) These also work well if you want to run in horde formation (10-wide) since you can just put two trays side-by-side.

For high elves, 6-wide is very popular for some reason, too!

Ralin Givens wrote:I make my movement trays outa sprue plastic and model boxes

Why have I not done this? .__. So simple and so perfect..

I use the GW ones, they are cheap and look good at $10. 1 set will fufill your IoB needs. Use 1 sheet of the plastic to make the skaven ones 5 wide and 10 deep if you want to leave room for expansion. Use the other sheet for the High Elf, I would go 6 wide this will allow an extra attack for your swordsman against the skaven as supporting ranks only get 1 attack and will increase the number of arrow shots from your sea guard if you expand them as well with some cutting and gluing one sheet will give your 2-6 wide units of elves potential to increase ranks to 5 which will help if you expand on the High Elves. What I personally do is buy some magnetic sheeting from Michaels or another hobby store see here: http://www.dickblick.com/products/promag-magnetic-sheets/ for $10 you can get enough to never run out. I cut and put this on the top where the figures are and on the bottom. Since my figures have Neodymium Rare Earth Magnets that you can buy for about $0.10 a piece they stick to the magnet sheeting, it is not a strong hold but enough that they won't fall over even if the table gets bumped or you pick them up. Then a put another layer of magnetic sheet on the bottom of the movement tray and use a metal toolbox for my figure storage and transportation so I can just open the toolbox and pull the whole unit out to save time.

If you want stylish movement trays:
http://www.shop.microartstudio.com/movement-trays-c-62.html
http://stores.ebay.com/Base-X-of-War (store currently closed for an update)

I used to make the old Sprue and Cardboard movement trays. Mostly because they are incredibly cheap (free essentially) and functional.

Lately I've been making magnetized movement trays as I love the fact that I don't have to worry about balancing 30+ models on uneven tables. Plus they store a lot easier. To make these just go down to your local Home Depot or Lowes and grab some thin sheets of metal. You can get big sheets for about $2. Then I either glue magnets on the bottom of bases or I use magnatized strips which you can cut to size. You can buy these at most hobby shops and some hardware stores as well. They will probably run you around $5 per 8.5"X11" sheet.

As far as making trays for formation, I would say always make bigger trays in case you want to expand later on. In the case of the skaven I would recommend making a large horde tray of 10 wide and (maybe) 10 deeps for huge blocks of slaves or clan rats.

Check this site out. Very reasonable prices. I've ordered from him several times and had no problems at all.

http://shogunminiatures.com/

I make mine out of old cd covers. Just pull out the lyrics and whatnot and BAM! movement tray.