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Hi all
Just a quick question. Me and some friends just started playing Warhammer again and we want to make a kick ass table. What do you all use on your table, felt? Gaming mats? Any recommendations where to get said gaming mat if you use one?

Thanks
Mike

My local store uses painted plywood, however, they are going to (eventually) switch over to the Realms of Battle boards.

I use polystyrene and paint it. I use static grass or sand for texture and of course plastic kits.
Also you could use something green to cover the table. Though I have no experience with that.

Started and still have a 3/4" inch thick birch plywood board that is balanced on a 2 x 4 ft folding table, covered in felt from a local joahns fabric.

Iv heard good things about mats from fuzzy miniatures

Zuzzy mats, dude. Zuzzy mats. I'm slowly buying them all.

Woodland scenics makes a 100x50 roll of grass in multiple colors that costs around $30 and looks pretty good. If your going to use fabrics use mdf board, much smoother surface and zero splintering.

Warboard looks like a nice option in the near future.

My clubs use mdf boards (usually 1/2" or 3/4") painted.
Terrain goes on top of them (and is usually modular).

Boards stack behind a cupboard which is full of terrain.

Similar to chromedog, our club uses MDF boards (unpainted though). We've got trestle table legs attached to the bottom of some of them so they can stand alone.

We put green felt sheets over them, and then terrain.

Easy and cheap 4 x 6 board.

Go to the local DIY store - find 2" thick, 2 x 8 foot long sheet insulation. Buy 2.

At same store, get grey "texturized" paint with medium grit. A pint should do you plenty.

measure twice, and score/cut once the sheets so you have QTY 3, 2 x 4 boards (bonus - sheet polystyrene insulation has a tongue and groove edge to make them fit snugly). Use the remainder for hills, etc later.

What i do is then use a marker and straight edge to mark out lines that make the boards look like giant slabs of poured concrete - just get a straight edge and mark the lines, then use a foam heat knife to (shallowly) score the lines. You're looking for a "groove" effect, but you don't want to go too deep.

Paint the boards. The paint acts as a glue for the grit, so there's no worry of it coming off - if you're really worried about it you can water down some PVA glue and do a 50/50 PVA glue water mix, and lightly coat the dried paint. THis will also give it strength and durability too. Then dry brush the same grey grit paint over the dried PVA.


Voila. You have a simple, cheap (like 50-55 bucks) 4 x 6 table you can pop terrain on and it will look like a city scape. Super simple, and really nice effect. Best of all, you can make and complete this in an afternoon.

The finished effect will look like a pavement megalopolis when you put terrain and buildings and stuff on it.

Realm of Battle board here.

Another vote for Zuzzy mats, they are fantastic over a bit of MDF board etc, just be patient, they can take awhile to deliver, but I've got two of them (mainly because I got the sizing wrong in my head and ordered two 6 x 4) but either way, they look awesome!

This would be sort of complex and involved, but I've been playing with the idea of starting with a ping pong table. It's a little bigger than 4x6, but that gives you somewhere to put your models, books, dice, etc OTHER than on playing surface. You could paint the table so that it's not obviously a ping pong table anymore, then either make a raised 4x6 area, or put down a 4x6 felt area to put whatever you want on top of it. The other thought that I have for the playing area is to put a "fence"/rim around the 4x6 area. Since I want to make a few different 2x2foot blocks that puzzle together, the fence would be there to hold them all together tightly. Final win, it folds up and gets out of the way when you're not playing. Again, I haven't started this project yet, but it's a thought in progress.

Thanks for all the ideas and keep them coming! Me and my buddies have a big game scheduled in the next couple weeks where we are going to discuss our future kickass table!

LongFang4Life wrote:
Hi all
Just a quick question. Me and some friends just started playing Warhammer again and we want to make a kick ass table. What do you all use on your table, felt? Gaming mats? Any recommendations where to get said gaming mat if you use one?

Thanks
Mike

My "gaming mats" are pretty much just 3 large pieces of fabric hemmed along the edges. One in a desert tan, one a dark green and the other an ash gray. Far cheaper than any gaming mats sold in stores. Thrown them on the table and then build up the terrain on top of them. I keep looking at the realm of battle boards, but they are stupidly expensive and the fact that they aren't finished means finding the time to actually paint and flock them to make the usable. :\

Skriker

At my FLGS, one of our gamers built a cheap table out of plywood and 4x4's. We painted it, and it's perfectly usable that way... but we took it a step further.

Back to Home Depot, got 2 pieces of 3'x4' 5/8" plywood, drilled holes through it and into the table. Glued pieces of dowel rod into the top pieces of plywood, so now they can be removed from the table and stored off to the side, but when they're on the table, they lock into place. Once that was done, we covered the plates in glue and based it with sand.

Plans for a future board involve making a set of "snow" plates, by getting another set of plywood plates made up, and covering them with textured white spray paint. One of these days...

LongFang4Life wrote:
Hi all
Just a quick question. Me and some friends just started playing Warhammer again and we want to make a kick ass table. What do you all use on your table, felt? Gaming mats? Any recommendations where to get said gaming mat if you use one?

Thanks
Mike

I took three 2'x4' MDF boards, about 1/2" thick, and attached Woodland Scenics grass mats to it. Easy enough to put on top of my dining room table and store between games.

I went and got a bag of sand, Insulation board, a gallon of glue and a pint of gray paint. Mix the Glue 50/50 with water, spread bit by bit and cover with sand. Wait 24 hours to dry and then brush of excess. Then Paint. I used gray to make a gravel board but you can do whatever you want with it. Miniwargaming made a tutorial.