Building a Warhammer Fantasy table

[Tama]

Ok, so far I have the basic design laid out but not much else. I'm doing a river theme. A 4x4 plywood board, some trees, a stirafoam hill or two, perhaps a nice building off in a corner....but then there is the main attraction, THE RIVER!!!!

I have no idea how to do about building a river. It is going to flow straight through the board preferably with a fork at one end.

If anyone has any insight into building a quality river or any other piece of a warhammer gaming board, please post here. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

[Wibbz]

PvA glue is your friend here, or at least the cheapest option.

[erloas]

In most cases when people build a board with a river (and really most of the time) they use a styrofoam on the entire board and build up extra layers for hills and take some away for valleys and rivers.
Many hobby shops carry a sort of clear/bluish resin to make water. I'm sure there are other ways but that is probably the easiest.

I would however recommend against making a static and set board if you want to game on it much. We had one at a store I used to frequent and the biggest problem was that it was hard to get any real varity in the scenery because of the set and defined pieces. So what happened most of the time is games ended up very similiar after a little while, you knew your opponents would deploy certain things in some areas and it would never change. It made the games too perdicatable and a bit boring after not too long.

Rivers make things even worse because they provide no cover at all but they really hinder troops that depend on movement. Depending how the river is set up, from one side to an adjacent size forming a corner then that corner always gets casters and archers and war machines and they are almost always safe from most things except flyers, sure they can be crossed, but since you can't march and enter difficult terrain very few CC units could reasonably get to the ranged. If you have it lengthwise then it basically splits the map in half and you end up with 2 mini games rather then a single fight. And if you go across the center then it completely neuters any army that relys on speed to win and it gives all ranged armies a huge advantage. It promotes turtling up and defensive armies because the one that doesn't have to cross the river is always going to be at an advantage.

While they make for some interesting games and challenges, they do get old after not too many games.

The solution is of course for modular terrain, so you can change the board around. Generally speaking it doesn't look quite as good, but if you take the effort I think it will make for better games for a longer time. If you built a bunch of 8" or 12" squares out of the styrofoam with different features then you can build a board and move features around. Build them sort of like the tiles from Carcassonne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcassonne_(board_game)) so you can match up features from one tile to the next. Also if you make a lot of them then you can completely add and remove features with spare squares and you can have enough to expand your board to 4x6 or 4x8 as well. (I find 4x4 is way too small for anything over like 1000 points). If you make 4-6 straight river pieces and then 3-4 corner river pieces you can still have a river and you can change how it flows and if you even use it at all in some games. You can also make much more detailed and realistic forests compared individual trees. Hills are sometimes a bit more tricky because they tend to be larger then a single tile, but you would build some as a full square at the hill height and then build a variety of pieces where the hill slops down to normal height from 1-2 of the sides. (see the carcassonne tiles again, just change the city idea to a hill and go from there) Of course this also makes for a lot more work, but in the end it will make for a much better table for actually gaming.
If you are looking for more of a display sort of table then of course it doesn't matter.

[Tama]

Thanks for all the input. I was thinking of doing the Styrofoam with it carved down for the river, but as you said, a non-movable piece would get quite boring after not too many games. As for the mobility problem with rivers, I was planning on making two bridges so that troops could have a focal point to fight and defend their sides. I will be playing an orcs and goblins army with no ranged except for two spear chukkas, and my main opponent will be a darkelf army with 18 repeater crossbowmen and two repeater bolt throwers. With your comments on how much the ranged team would have the advantage, I've become quite skeptic on if I even want to go forth and build a river...

I guess I'll come up with a few more sketches and see how things work out.

As for the Styrofoam though, isn't it quite hard to glue onto because glue eats away at it? I was going to cover the board in sand and paint over it but I am not sure how well that would work with a Styrofoam base.

[GhostTree]

Sounds swell.

[erloas]

Well I haven't glued styrofoam too much, I have some but haven't really done anything that creative with it, just basic hills, but I do know there are some types of glues that don't eat into it. I don't think the normal elmar's type glue used in basing most of the time does anything at all to it.

As for texture though, what I did is get a can of the "stone" texture spray paint and used that on all of my styrofoam hills. While normal spray paint eats into styrofoam like crazy the stone texture spray didn't seem to eat into it at all. It doesn't have great color coverage though so you might want to use a base coat of very light spray paint(really light layers may not do anything at all, but it doesn't take too much to start to melt it, but at least with scenery a few pits and indents actually make it look better rather then worst) or get some cheap acrylic paint for the basecoat and then put the stone texture over it.

[Thulos3Damned]

I have made several gaming tables over the years and the best adhesive i found was 3M #77 Spray Adhesive. Its very strong and won't melt anything. Just use it in a well ventielated area. I have made rivers before too. I just make them in several sections that are removable so that I can change the board.

[Gerrok]

I will support the idea of movable terrain pieces.

Static boards suck. And if you play on a single board often enough then armies start to be designed for a specific board. And if you ever play 40k, the board can't change to fit your needs.

An open board with seperate terrain pieces is definately the way to go.

[Tama]

Ok, so I decided against the river, built my board and made some terrain. So far I've made a house with a small manger, a big grass hill, a big rock obstacle, and some small rock/tree terrain pieces. Now I need to get all of my terrain pieces on movable bases. The big hill and rock will do fine on their own but all the other things need to be based. I'm not quite sure what to put them on, as the only idea I had was wood but that would be too heavy for my liking. What have you guys done to keep your terrain on bases?

[erloas]

Most of the terrain I've seen that has been flat has been on some hardboard/particleboard. I have some from Home Depot, its only about 1/4 thick and it is plenty sturdy without being overly heavy. I've seen some forests on it before, but I haven't actually got around to making terrain with it myself yet. If you want to be really thin you can also get a sheet of alluminium at about 1'x2' from Home Depot pretty cheap. I've used it for magnetic movement trays so far, but it would work for terrian too. The only thing about it is that paint wouldn't stick to it, at least the spray paint I tried to use as a base coat, not sure how well it would work for gluing down flock or if you primered it first. I'm going to have to try soon with my movement trays I just haven't got to it yet.

[Seductivpancakes]

GW did release the modular gaming tables. They are pretty swell.

[Tama]

Psh, I ain't buying GW stuff if I have the creative ability to do it on my own. Those boards are quite nice, but meh, I like personal touches.

Anyway, I've just about finished my board. 4x4 plywood on 2x3 supports, sand basing, dark green paint coat, then a nice light green flocking. I've got six pieces of terrain to go with it all:
1. small gathering of rocks
2. Large rock mound
3. large grass hill
4. Medium sized hut with small manger (threw some unused spider riders into the manger to make it look in use)
5. Large stone temple
6. Long strip of jagged, tall, rock spires

I ended up going to my local hobby shop and finding some very nice large thick balsa wood templates which I am in the process of sanding that I will be putting all of my terrain on to make them easily movable for quick scenery changes.
The only thing that I wish I had were some trees. Those little buggers are quite expensive, so I opted out of that idea.

When everything is said and done, I will post some pics of my baby in action. I hope to play my first game on it this Thursday verses my dreaded dark elf enemy....... I'ma crush dem!!! WAAAGHHH!

[Galain]

GW did release the modular gaming tables. They are pretty swell.

Swell, but EXTREMELY pricey.

[Seductivpancakes]

Swell, but EXTREMELY pricey.
Very true sir.

[Voharius]

Here's a really neat thread from a guy who built his own modular table from scratch, with lots of in-progress pics and info. It's a great read whether you're doing a terrain project at that scale or not.

http://warhammer.org.uk/PhP/viewtopic.php?t=49547

[Gerrok]

Honestly I would just head down to a local gaming store on game night. You can grab terrain, get a good look at it, and whatever else. Plus there are usually a few people who know their stuff and would drop some tips on how to build things.

It's also good to see what doesn't work. It's usually that massive piece of terrain that always dominates table, and no one ever uses, or else a bunch of small things that look good on the board, but don't do anything.