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<td>When building my gaming board I tried to make it
as good looking as possible while still staying as flexible as
possible. I wanted to combine two important aspects of gaming
table design, that seemed to be important to me. First I wanted
to have submersible sections for rivers and second I wanted a
sectional gaming board that didn't take a lot of room to store. </td>
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The solution is a hybrid-modular gaming table, as I call it,
consisting of a frame to hold 3x4 tiles which are 40x40cm large
each. These tiles are mounted on little 10cm high pillars so a
completely flat tile would only be a 1.2cm thick board. Flat
tiles are easily storable as they take away only little space.
River tiles are up to 10cm high and they fit together at
predefined edges. Raised sections as mountains or hills can be
distributed normally as on any other flat gaming table.
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<td>While I have completed a flat green Warhammer
battlefield, the jewel of my collection of gaming boards is the
Mordheim board. When designing those tiles I asked myself what
floors would show up in a ruined city section? On one side,
streets with flagstone or wooden floors and on the other side
broken and burned areas with dirt ground. This should give
Mordheim a dark and sinister feeling.
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<td>After some calculating and the obligatory
pilgrimage to the craft store came the interesting part: All
tiles were built using <a href="http://www.hirstarts.com" target=_new>Hirst Arts</a> Castlemolds(TM) sets. The board tiles consist of 5
different molds: flagstone floor (1x1" and 1,5x1,5"),
cobblestone floor and normal floor tiles. To fill a 40x40cm tile
with flagstone floor I have to cast it 26 times. Hmm. </td>
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If I
combined the different techniques and used sand as well (no
casts at all!) I should be able to get the number of castings to
reasonable dimensions. (26 times...) Later, I added wooden areas
from the wooden floor mold as well.
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<td>An important feature of the board is that it is completely flat. This might not add to character but sure helps
keeping your miniatures upright. It also adds to flexibility. I
wanted to add lots of little details to the earthen areas,
skeletons, branches, wooden doors, skulls, weapons and other
things - these areas had to be as flat as possible, too.
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<td>All buildings and floor tiles were painted using
the same outdoor latex dispersion paint from the craft store.
Most pieces were spray painted black prior to this to avoid the
paint softening the glue and especially the buildings
subsequently would start to fall apart. I tried waterproof wood
glue, but it wasn't as waterproof as stated on the bottle...<br />
<br />
The paint techniques are the same as in all my pieces. I use 3
shades mostly, a dark undercoat and a medium drybrush followed
by a highlight of a very light grey.</td>
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<td>After the first test game our experts discovered
that it was fairly easy to guess distances on a board that is
composed of 1x1" tiles. So I left the normal floor tiles
out and went back to flagstone, cobblestone and wooden floors.
Flagstone must be assembled in a way that does not form an
easily recognizable pattern.<br />
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<td>Then I felt ready for the river sections. The
width of the river gave me something to think of, a wider river
would give an interesting bridge ensemble, but the question
arose, would such a terrain be gaming-friendly? So I settled
with a nearer river, about 10-15cm wide.<br />
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<td>Every river segement has at least one bridge
assembled with it. A gaming board with areas that are impossible
or hard to reach (which is practically the same) would lead to a
one-sided game. All bridges are modular, they can be taken out
and replaced with a railing section. Additionally this allows
for some interchangeability at game setup, I planned to make
different bridges in different styles. The railings come off,
too, this helps with storage.<br />
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<td>I also added a pond, the water was made by filling
gloss finish into a trough on the tile. The finish was added in
several layers and I used up almost half a litre for the
complete pond. The ponds bed consists of sand and stones
arranged in a natural fashion and was painted and drybrushed in
browns. It has been completly finished and painted before the
the lacquer was poured in. Some areas of the finish were covered
with watered down brown paint to indicate dirty water.</td>
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<td colspan="2">It took me about a year to complete
the whole table and gaming board. But it surely paid off! Enjoy
some photos of our games in progress (click on the image for a
larger version).</td>
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<p align="center">
<a href="http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/tgpix/infopages/14/260j.jpg">
</a>
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<a href="http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/tgpix/infopages/14/260l.jpg">
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<p align="center"><a href="http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/tgpix/infopages/14/260n.jpg">
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<p align="center"><a href="http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/tgpix/infopages/14/260p.jpg">
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<p align="center"><a href="http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/tgpix/infopages/14/260r.jpg">
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<p align="center"><a href="http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/tgpix/infopages/14/260t.jpg">
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<td colspan="2" align="center">If you want to see more pictures of
games in progress, visit the <a href="http://zion.adm.at/~sirius/Miniaturen/Mortheim/Mortheim_eng.php" target=_new>Mighty Pages' Mordheim</a> section.</td>
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