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Introduction

After years of being in question over whether or not to buy a realm of battle gaming board, me and my hobby partner finally decided to take it upon ourselves to create our own table since it's less expensive and we've been modelling for enough years to feel as though we can do a pretty good job. I don't use these forums often but decided to document our progress here to get feedback on the build as well as help others who are attempting a similar project themselves. I am doing almost 100% of the work myself, my partner will probably do some detailed terrain painting near to the end of finishing the board, whilst I am responsible for design, assembly and base painting. We are also both university students and only have occasional short weeks off to work on the board, meaning that this article may have long periods without updates between lots of updates in short periods. That's the introduction sorted, on to the build progress:

The Plan

The board will be desert themed with terrain to emulate a destroyed city. A mixture of barren, open sections and tight industrial spaces will be created so that the board can be built to suit different game styles. The table is separated into several 12"x12" hardboard tiles so that a variety of combinations can be assembled when completed.

Scenery assets:

5-6 destroyed buildings including large centrepiece building.

Modular road system.

Blast craters/ruined terrain scenery tiles.

Trench system.

Getting Started

I wanted to start with something simple. I decided to create the blast crater tiles using the plastic moon craters from GW with coarse sand to add varying rock sizes to the ground texture.



Next, a layer of brown emulsion.



Finally a light brown/bleach colour heavy drybrush to complete the sandstone look.



City structures

I wanted to create buildings in such a way that their tiles could be either arranged closely together to make a tight industrial city, or spread out between empty desert tiles to imitate hostile wasteland ruins. We decided to purchase the GW Imperial Sector kit, despite it being fairly expensive, as it provides a ton of building parts and is really versatile. I started by creating a standard, small ruined structure.



Basecoated with brown paint.



The next goal was something taller, a bridge or archway. I created both sides of the bridge on separate tiles so that they can be arranged together as an arch or individually as ruins.

Bridge half 1:



Bridge half 2:





Bridge halves together (one half basecoated).



The next building I planned to be a factory with multiple floors and platforms to add further verticality to the board. Rather than building the entire structure on a single tile, I once again opted to spread it over 2 tile sections to add versatility to the final board.

The factory arranged as a closed structure.



The factory arranged as a wide entryway.



The final building needed to be a centrepiece for the board. I wanted a cathedral/headquarters inspired structure that units could stand on top and inside of. Instead of another modular, disjointed building I simply used two tile pieces glued together to occupy the large structure. The building has three levels and models can stand inside it. The first floor is modelled to look as though it is crumbling apart with support beams showing through the floor.





That's all for now. Updates to follow soon!

Love this! Keep it comming!

Did you just use a heavy layer of PVA to stick down the sand/rocks?
How did you apply the emulsion to the tiles?

 Brillow80 wrote:
Did you just use a heavy layer of PVA to stick down the sand/rocks?
How did you apply the emulsion to the tiles?

I watered PVA down quite a lot to stick the sand down and it's only a pretty thin layer, it takes a while to dry but adding water lets you use less glue and sticks the sand down just fine, especially after paint is added. I added a small amount of water to the emulsion paint for the same reason and used the large brush you can see in the first image to cover the boards.

Progress

The 'board' so far:



As you can see it's actually large enough to play on at this point (4' x 3'), once painted that is.

Creating a Road System

While the buildings are being basecoated and are drying I wanted to figure out how to create the road tiles. I originally planned on doing typical grey city roads with some kind of guttering on the edges, but this doesn't really fit the rocky/desert theme. I decided that some kind of mud tracks to represent tanks driving through wet sand and muddy ground would be more appropriate and would look good if done well.

Firstly, I took a test tile and mixed 2 parts DIY Filler to 1 part water. Any kind of plaster/caulk would work. I pasted it onto the board in a line across the full width of the tile.



Next, I used a Shadowsword tank to make an imprint onto the filler while it was still drying (this was tricky because if it's too wet it just peels off and sticks onto the tank, whereas if it's too dry it will be hard and no imprint is made - it also cracks under the weight).





Finally, I repeated the process to make two parallel tracks. I left the filler drying for too long this time (literally only a minute or two longer) which meant it was too hard to make tank imprints, but still looks like mud dragged by a vehicle. PVA and sand complete the board ready for painting.



With the test fairly successful I repeated the process for a corner section.



Before basecoat:



After basecoat:



Once fully painted the mud tracks should be washed darker brown to make them stand out more, although they are already noticeable (the lighting in the above image is poor).

Fully Basecoated Board So Far

Hellhound added for size comparison. So far 14 out of 28 tiles are completed, more than enough to occupy a standard 1,500-2,000 point game.





More updates to follow!

I had the same idea in mind. Looking forward to seeing more progress.

This is looking really good, I'll be keeping my eye on this thread

Subscribed!

When you're done I will gladly PM you my shipping address

Update

Just a short update as I realised I haven't posted on this thread in a couple of months. Basically, as a Uni student, it's been exam season and studies means no time for 40k :(

Thankfully that's over with now and I've finished the academic year and have time off until August/September meaning there's lots of modelling to do. Since the last progress update I've drybrushed the entirety of the gaming table and it's looking ready to continue adding board sections to. The next goals are to finish the road system, followed by a crashed lander (spread over a few board pieces which can be arranged together), and finally a trench system using the Wall of Martyrs kits we bought a while back. However, since the new 40k rulebook came out both me and my hobby partner (who also has been bunked down with even more exams than me) have been reading through the new rules and updating all our current army lists, which in my own case often means converting hundreds of models and repainting plenty others. Terrain making and board construction will resume shortly, but this is just a heads up in case there's another break between updates

Since I couldn't post an update without any pictures (even though the board hasn't really changed since last time)... here's a picture of some Death Korps chilling on a ruin

Very cool man, loved the bridge half parts

Update

Big update! After almost a year of no posting...

Another year of University finished means modelling continues where we left off. Up to this point I have 14 finished board sections painted and assembled with ruins & craters - and just started on the road system. In total I have 28 square feet of hardboard cut to size so we're halfway towards a truly apocalypse-sized playing table.

My hobby partner is also back for the week and we wanted to play a game with my new Tau force to start things off. We needed one more board section to create a 5x3' playing surface of 15 tiles so I used my leftover Hammerhead parts with some foamboard to model a raised gun emplacement. I saw the rules for this gun emplacement from forge world and thought it would be interesting to base a terrain piece on it. It's made from various assorted kits between tau and imperial vehicle sets and was basecoated grey ready for our game, to be painted properly at a later date. (Tau won in the last turn by 1 victory point )



After playing the game we realised that our board was missing open space and felt fairly cluttered with difficult terrain and buildings. We decided to add some more open areas on our next board sections, which would be the crashed Aquila lander and trench system. Unfortunately the trench lines were slightly shorter than our 12" board tiles so to make them as modular as possible we glued a couple of tiles together. This means the trenches can be set up as either one long line or two separate sections. Finally we added sand and left to dry (the second trench board is hidden under the other one here):



The final tiles were for the modular road system. We used polyfilla to mould the mud tracks as before and a PVA/water mix to stick the sand down (I used some old fine grey modelling gravel as a substitute as we began to run out of dry sand).





For the last board tile I wanted a ramp to lead onto the raised gun emplacement. I used a combination of foamboard and filler to create a ruined ramp and drew mud tracks leading onto it.



Hopefully the (final?) update will follow tomorrow as we paint everything remaining ready to complete the full 7x4' gaming board. We have a little extra motivation as my hobby partner decided to buy a new toy to test out in a battle after were done:



Until then...