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<td>Our modular trench boards were built for UK Games Day 1999 as
part of our Gaming Club display. The scenario was an allied Ork
and Chaos assault on a forge world.</td>
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The defenders were the Imperial Guard and being a forge world they
had lots of tanks...and a Reaver Titan. This picture shows one of the
boards. As you can see we wanted a heavily cratered, mud-strewn
battlefield to reflect all the heavy artillery action.
As usual we had very little time to build our display, and these
boards were built in two weeks from buying the materials to delivery
of the finished boards to Games Day...and that included painting the
Reaver Titan! Most of the hard work was done by Tom and Mark (of
GorkaMorka fort fame) assisted and supervised by Adam.
Planning
This display was inspired by the lovely trench terrain in the 40K
Chaos Codex and White Dwarf around the time of the Codex release. The
total area was to be 8 feet by 6 feet because this would be twice the
size of our usual club gaming boards (6 feet by 4) which would mean
that the display could be used as two 'normal' gaming boards during
club meetings.
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<td>This is our original sketch for the boards. The trenches would
run along the long edge of the display and would be made up of
two 2 by 4 foot boards. The rest of the terrain would be four 2
by 4 foot boards with some free-standing rocky crags. Since
there would be lots of tanks and titans we wanted the terrain to
be quite open</td>
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One of the things we were quite keen to do was to make some really big
rocky crags. Most of the hills that we use are quite small, and when
gaming we declare that they 'count as' blocking line of sight or
whatever. For a display game we wanted really big crags - 18 inches or
two feet high!
Historical gaming buffs will realise that these trenches are not
historically accurate. We know that too. If you look at photographs of
trenches from, for example, the first world war you will see that they
are much more convoluted and zig-zagged than those on our boards. Real
trenches have lots of corners built in to them so that troops can
defend them if the enemy get into the trench system. The zig-zags
allow troops to fall back and defend the trench at each successive
corner.
We made our trenches this way for a couple of reasons. First, we
were working to a very tight time schedule and so sacrificed some
realism for ease of construction. Second, trenches are very
difficult to attack in 40K. To make them accurately zig-zagged would
have made them almost impregnable.
Materials
# Two 4 by 8 feet sheets of 50mm thick polystyrene (Styrofoam)
# Six 2 by 4 feet panels of 10mm chipboard (the store cut them for
us)
# One large tub of textured wall covering
# Corrugated cardboard, balsa wood, Necromunda sprues, thick
cardboard and plastic I-beam for the trench walls and floors
# One 5 litre drum of PVA glue
# Duct tape
# Brown emulsion (latex, household) paint.
Method
Making the boards
These boards were made in the same way as the castle <a href="http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/infopages/page242.html">modular
terrain</a>. They were basically 50mm (2 inch) polystyrene (styrofoam)
sheeting glued onto 2 feet by 4 feet chipboard panels with PVA glue.
It is essential that you get the edges of the styrofoam at 90 degrees,
otherwise you will have ugly gaps between the boards when you push
them together. The easiest way to do this is to sandwich the styrofoam
between two of the chipboard panels and use the edges of the panels to
guide your knife or hot wire cutter when cutting the foam. You can see
this stage in photographs in stage 2 of
the castle terrain. The plain boards can be glued together straight
away, but the trenches need cutting out of the trench boards before
you glue the styrofoam to the boards:
Making the trenches
The trenches would be too deep if they were simply cut out of the
full depth of the styrofoam - a figure should be able to look out over
the top. (Second historical note: real trenches are quite deep,
so that troops can take cover. There are ledges and slopes to allow
them to shoot over the top. Again, we went for simplicity but you can
suit yourself!). To make the trenches they were first drawn on with a
thick felt pen. Then they were cut out at full depth with a knife or
hot wire cutter (both worked). The trench part was removed and sliced
through to make it half as thick, and then the bottom half was slotted
back into the trench slots. Thus we ended up with trenched that were
half as deep as the styrofoam, or about 1 inch.
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<td>This picture shows one of the trench boards after the detail
has been added to the trench walls. You can see that the
trenches are not as deep as the full thickness of the styrofoam.</td>
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With the boards and styrofoam glued together and the basic trench
shapes cut out we began the process of detailing up the trenches and
other terrain boards. This is described in part two.