My first ever gaming table (only took 12 years)

[Jericho]

Hey guys, with 8th edition coming out and my enthusiasm for the game skyrocketing again, I am really excited to be playing games at my own house for the first time. I finally got off my butt and bought some MDF for a gaming board

I have three 24x48" sections of 1/2" MDF, which sit on my roommate's dining room table beautifully. It's a 54x54" table so even with all three sections on there it's only hanging off the sides by 9". I will be getting a gaming mat to lay on top, but I'm not sure if I want one of the good green ones GW made recently, or if I want a brown mat to match the scenery a little bit better. It would also make things look a bit less silly when I make some Chaos Wastes and Khemri scenery (two of the armies I like, don't have the Khemri painted yet but if they get any releases soon I'll be ready!!). Anyway that's another couple of days before I need to start worrying about that.

For scenery that's built and ready to go, I have more than I need for one gaming table. I've got a few more tree stands than I have in these images, plus the 40k stuff. For Fantasy I have an outhouse, small cart, Dwarf mine entrance, graveyard, Chaos temple thingy that got painted darker colors and now needs dead grass and snow effects. Maybe some bitz to add some contrast too. 2 lava pools as well to match the Chaos temple (also needs snow and dead grass still).

Not a bad variety, but nowhere near enough! With the cool new rules I need to make a swamp, quicksand, and some of the other cool stuff too. I really want to make a bit of Khemri and Dwarf scenery, maybe another 1-2 Chaos looking things too. The floating rock with runes etc. on the top from the VFBRB is pretty awesome and I'll probably draw some inspiration from that. From my GW redshirt days I made some interesting projects (like a Dwarf stronghold, Chaos shrines, flying magical obelisks etc.) and I'm sure I'll be able to come up with something neat.

I think I have an Ork watch tower in progress that's being stored in my parents' basement along with my scenery making supplies. They never made the trip to the new apartment yet. The very beginnings of a Tilean leaning tower as well, pretty much the base and the stairs leading up to/around the base of the tower are done, but the tower itself never got built.

For 40k I have a 2nd edition 40k Bastion and Ork fort (can't remember the exact name but it's gorgeous) and a couple other random things like a Forgeworld Pillbox w/ sandbag emplacements around it, some generic barricades, 2 sets of Ork barricades to go with the fortress (not painted yet) and the Inquisitor hab block I have works too. I have a Chimera bunker somewhere that's not quite painted yet.

More to come as I get stuff done, I'll try to take some pics of the 40k stuff some time soon as well. In the meantime I intend to break the table in with a game ASAP

[Jericho]

Moved the old hobby supplies to the new apartment, I had a deliciously evil grin on my face when I unpacked the styrofoam and hot wire cutter. I expect I will be playing with those again soon

In the meantime I've drawn a few quick sketches of some things I want to build. A Khemri water feature, a small tomb entrance with Ushabti guardian (I can spare one, especially if I get clever and can use one model to represent a half buried statue and one broken one I also am working on some sketches for a Dwarfen artificial hill and some other stuff. Should be a fun couple of weeks.

Sketches will be uploaded later when I can copy them off of my work notepad with confidential information on it

[ulruk headsplitter]

looking good mate!
is the round ruin made by yourself or?...
just one little thing that bugs me a wee bit, is the color of the ground on your terrain pieces and table. the table is a bright brownish whilst your terrain has light brown, dark brown, and black underground, you might want to fix that

[Jericho]

Most of the terrain was done for our club tourney last year, and I got to keep some of it. Since a number of us were doing the painting and we would improvise when we ran out of a color, there's no 100% matching involved We also had different mats for desert boards, chaos wastes boards, green healthy areas... and scenery was painted for each kind.

The mat will probably be brown to help smooth out most of the awkwardness with different colors. It'll never be 100% perfect but it will clash the least with the most scenery types.

As for the round temple thingy, it was one of those injected resin/foam pieces that GW made years back. They were spray painted super bright grey and had green static grass on them. I sprayed mine black and airbrushed a few grey hilights. Never did get to redo the details or add static grass/snow flock to make it look more Chaos Wastes-like. I plan to fix that and help it match some of the other Chaos themed scenery I'll have by the time I'm done

The GW pre-cast scenery stuff like the one green hill, graveyard and ruin will all be repainted to one degree or another. I'm thinking on the graveyard one I might just paint the gravel brown to match, and leave most of the details grey. It's mostly just stone stuff anyway! That should help make things a bit more uniform.

In the meantime I think I shredded my page of notes that had sketches of scenery items on the bottom before I left work today. Oops, didn't think that one through. Stupid office policy

[Jericho]

I felt I would be doing the entire community a disservice if I didn't post pics of this awesome old Ork Fortress as soon as possible

Oh the good old days of card scenery, how I miss you

[Jericho]

Holy smokes, I played some Fantasy 8th edition over the weekend and I really am excited about playing more. Haven't had this much drive to paint and make scenery in ... well, I can't remember the last time so giving a number would be tough

Anyway after reading over the new terrain sections, clearly I need a LOT more different types of scenery than I had initially thought. Sigmarite Shrines, magical portals (anyone else think of City on the Edge of Forever when they hear that phrase?!), all kinds of stuff. I think if our club wants to make use of these awesome new terrain types, we really should make a collection of 1-2 of everything.

That would mostly fall to me, not just because I have experience with these things but probably because I'm the only one who would be crazy enough to want to do it I'm going to try and get a bit of a budget of club funds to go absolutely terrain crazy, that way we can bring a bin of the more "out there" scenery to our club days and tournaments.

So yeah this could be a much more long term project than I had anticipated

BTW I refuse to make a Ghost Fence. I had a great laugh when my friend Danny's Swordmasters went from WS10 one moment (walking through the River of Light) to WS1 as they charged a unit of Night Goblins hiding behind the afforementioned Ghost Fence... that's a bit silly. [edit] UNLESS I can manage to find some clear plasticard or beams to make a ghost fence out of. That would actually be half amusing. I would simply refuse to use such a silly thing in my games [/edit]

[Jericho]

Just on my way out to get some bins and stuff to store some of the new projects Before I go, I wanted to give a quick update.

Not a huge amount of building has been done in the last little bit, but I have been planning like a crazy person and prepping for some real honest-to-god work on scenery. I finished prepping 29 hardboard bases for random small-medium scenery pieces, and another 25 narrower strips designed for random things like barricades, fences, walls, etc.

I can't stress enough that not all of these will be for me! I don't think I need 25 sets of obstacles for my single gaming board A handful for myself for Fantasy, some 40k ones for the Ork barricade sets I bought a while back, and probably the other dozen or so for the gaming club. Most will be generic walls/fences like in the Citadel set, but some will be done up with torches and random other stuff to count as the fancy types like blazing barricades or blessed bulwarks or whatever they call them.

Lots more little doodles and sketches of ideas, and I think the first one I'm gonna build is a Sigmarite shrine. Should be relatively easy, using some bases to make tiles, an old Warrior Priest model drybrushed to look like a statue, and the whole thing resting atop a small mound with a path going up to it. Add a few Empire looking bits and bobs for color

I also included a few shots of the stuff I picked up from storage in my parents' basement. The beginnings of my leaning tower project (minus the tower, haven't figured out how I want to do that yet!) and the Orc watchtower type thing I never quite finished. Just needs sand on the base and a basecoat of brown, then I'll add the rest of the planks to the top part. It would be too hard to paint the inside of the structure with the roof all installed