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So I'm looking to make a 8x12 or 8x16 Apoc board.

Either a ruined city or with a castle on one side,

I was wondering if anyone had any basic advice for creating a board, and I wanted to know weather it'd be a cheaper (Or a better idea) to make a table special for this (like a permanent wood construction) or just buy a large about of folding tables and make it movable. I was going to make a modular city or a static castle

Modular city sorta like this: [youtube] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdJvZPTExaI&list=FLaZt5eaL5Ytal7hOA4DjXFw [/youtube]

SO any advice would be welcome! I might start a standalone hobby blog for this project if I get the funds to do it!

i dont think you can make a board that big without making it sectional for tear-down. An 8by12/16ft table is massive lol.

What you could do is make 4 normal 4by6 boards so you can use them for normal game play, or push them together and the terrain you hard-fixed (or detail you painted) magically fits into an 8by12ft board for the apoc board.

Larger pieces of wood, or any material you want the table to be made of, are usually cheaper than small ones. Its more how much money can you dump at once and can you move it around easily at that size than anything else. Unless you got a pickup truck, youre probably forced to use smaller pieces of material and build smaller boards. i know my car will no way in hell fit a 4by6ft board, let alone 4 of them lol even if i hinged them so they folded in half.

8x12 feet...
My lord. That isn't Apocalypse. That is Thanksgiving with all the In-Laws, First/Second/Third Cousins, that weird Uncle who isn't really your Uncle... Well, you get the point!

But seriously, at that point don't even bother making a board. I would just take six or so card tables and just push them together. Then, to make it all look nice, just throw a huge table cloth on it. If you truly are so keen to get that beautiful look, paint the table cloth, eh? But man... That's a bloody big table, mate.

I made a city fight table that was 6x4.....used all 2x2 boards that can be rearranged. The boards have roads and some blocks with sidewalks. The buildings are added on to fit with whatever the scenario calls for...very modular. I think I have some pics of it in my gallery.

Are you sure you don't want to go 6x12 or 6x16 instead? I'm not sure if everyone could reach the middle of the board otherwise...

Brother Michael is absolutely correct. Want a cool Apoc. Board? Take to regular 6x4 boards and put them together to make a 12x4 board. That's plenty.

I was planning on making 3 seperate 4x8 board with modular terrain that could intersect easily. My main concern is weather it'd be cheaper to buy folding tables or to make a huge wood table for it all

It's a tough call. Lumber isn't so cheap that DIY options are guaranteed to result in significant savings, but you do have the benefit of tailoring the results to your needs if you build it, yourself. Wobbly tables suck, generally, and you'll be putting a lot of work into this thing. You're also talking about a lot of real estate, here. Building a sturdy, permanent table with storage space underneath would make you happier in the long run, I think, if you've got the space for it. You can always make it semi-permanent by using lag bolts instead of screws at certain joints - still strong, but make partial tear-down at least possible, even if you wouldn't want to do it often.

Regardless of how you end up supporting the playing surface, I do think that 8' might be a bit deep. For ease of access, I would cap it at 6', personally - still bigger than a normal board, but anyone can reach the center with relative ease, barring small children and the physically handicapped. 8' is workable, but a bit of a stretch [rimshot]. The 2'x8' offcuts from the sheets for the top can be used for shelving below, where seams don't matter.

I would honestly just get forget the idea of making an entire apocalypse board out of lumber. Way too expensive, and unless you have permanent space, where the hell do you fit something that takes up that much real estate. If you are planning on using it for a Gaming Club or something where it will see weekly use, take the lumber route. But for something at home, where you may only use it once or twice a month, if even at that, you don't need to go all out.

I was going to make 3 boards and intersect them

I'm mostly wondering how to support them

What I would do is make 3 4x6 tables so you have a 12x6 apoc table, if your handy like myself you can build a nice table with some storage underneath, How much time do you have to build it? Building a nice table will take time let alone 3 of them. There are some great vids on youtube on how to build your own gaming table, I would check them out. And as stated before how much space do you have to use/store these? do you live in an apt? Do you have an unfinished basement at your home to use these? do you want to double them up as a dining table? All questions to be thought of but if you have the time and the skill make a nice gaming table with drawers under it for storing whatever you need to.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PugcM5BE0H4

If you dont mind them being tooo wonky.

you can get some of these


a few metal brackets, and plywood. you can screw them all together at the location. it should be sturdy enough so long as no one is walking on it.

We live in an Amish house. On our property we also have and old Amish school. The main room out there is like 40x30 ft so I'm not cramped for space. I was going to make the boards out of Polystyrene Insulation. Saw horses wouldn't work that well considering the weight of some of the things we would put on it.

and I wanted to know weather it'd be a cheaper (Or a better idea) to make a table special for this (like a permanent wood construction) or just buy a large about of folding tables and make it movable.

Depends on what you want the permanent wood construction to look like.

At the least expensive side of things - you can make a 4x8 table for about $100. Not much to look at - but functional.

Start with one 3/4" ply sheet and rip it into 4" wide strips. Cross cut (8) of the (12) strips into (3) 32" long strips. Leave (2) of the strips alone and cross cut the remaining (2) into (4) 46 1/2" long strips. Using the 32" long strips, glue and screw four of them together to create a column that is 4 3/4" x 4 3/4" x 32" tall. You should have 6 of them. Take the four 46 1/2" strips glue and screw them to the two 96" long strips to create a box that is 4" x 48" x 96" with the 46 1/2" attached at the ends and evenly in the middle. Take another full sheet of 3/4" ply, glue and screw the large frame to that. Take your 6 legs and attach them to the bottom of the table top. Give everything a sanding to ease the edges and fill any voids in the edge of the ply. Give it a coat of a cheap interior paint. The table will have a bit of bounce to it (3/4" can clear span 32" without a problem...but it can deflect a little in the middle of each span). You may need to add some leveling feet to the legs if the floor isn't flat too.

Moving up from there - things can go to insanely expensive really fast. Mine has a lot of solid hardwood, pullouts for rolling dice and holding books, reversible felt top, storage cabinets in column legs, bar molding surround... It cost a good bit more than a couple of folding tables. If you stick with a painted finish (to avoid expensive cabinet grade plywood) and don't go overboard on hardware - you can still make a pretty nice table for cheaper than a couple of folding tables, assuming you have the tools and don't place a premium on your time.

Time wise - making 3 identical tables won't take much more than making one table - provided you plan ahead and have room to work. Just make 3 of each item. Cut 3 times, glue three times, screw three times. Doing it all at once lets you glue up and keep moving forward. By the time the third is done, the glue on the first is dry enough to work and you can move on to the next step.

I will echo that 8 feet is really wide. I've played on tables that wide before - and the middle ends up being a dead zone...no one can move their figures there - because they can't reach. 6 feet is about as wide as I would recommend - and even that can be pretty difficult for the vertically challenged unless they are built like Clyde. A 6 foot wide board is still a lot of real estate to work with, and you can go longer to create a larger front to be dealt with. Another option with monster boards is to make an "H" or "U" shape to them. The empty areas can be done up as impassible (except to flyers and other things not dependent on the ground) water or some other terrain feature. It lets players get into the middle though and reach into the board more readily. Depending on the crowd you play with - 24" void should be wide enough...but then again, for some people - that isn't nearly enough. For that you can do 4 tables that are the somewhat standard 4x6 and then have one table that is 4x10 (or something along those lines). The total game space would end up being a not insignificant 10x16 (less the two voids).

Another thing which I have seen done is to take a cue from model railroaders and have a hole in the middle of your board. Make it a lake or something like that. You have to duck under the table to get to it - but it at least makes sure that you don't end up with unusable space in the middle of the board (other than of course the hole itself).

I am definitely going to echo what was already echoed.
Once again: 8 feet is WAY too much. 6 feet... even that is a lot. Think about it, a normal 40k board is played 6x4. That's 6 feet long, 4 feet wide. 8 feet would be trying to reach across an entire regular board just to get to the center. No. Most Apocalypse boards I have seen remain the 4 foot width, they are just 12+ feet long. 4x12 should suffice. If you are really keen on making something different than just one long board you can always run the original MWG apocalypse board. Dang, that was cool. For those of you who don't know, they took two 6x4 gaming boards and made an L shape out of them, and then they took another 6x4 gaming table and connected it to the L with a foot long bridge. It was pretty awesome!