This is the second board that I made for the Tabletop Knights gaming day. My kind Daughter gave me a copy of Destiny 2 when she gifted me her old PS4. One of the worlds you visit is Nessus.
This is not my image and it is used without permission
I fell in love with the visuals and wanted to recreate them. In the small space of a Kill Team board I wouldn’t be able to do it justice, but maybe I could give a taste.
First up was to make flocking, My local DIY store gave me a small piece of pure white foam and the poundshop provided cheap paint to colour it.
Planning out the board
Laying down 10mm of foam under the “metal” floor plates. I wanted them raised so there was some variations in the floor level.
The buildings
Adding the sides for extra strength.
Glueing parts into position
The crane
Adding colour and weathering.
More details.
Some of the columns in place with vegetation.
Set dressing.
Over all I wasn’t so happy with this board. There were a few tiny mistakes. I didn’t like the colour scheme on the buildings. I would have approached it differently next time. I have no idea where I am going to store it now. I did offer it up for sale at the event, but no interest.
This is the first post of three regarding the Tabletop Knights show in Germany.
This will be about the first display board, Gone?
I saw this image, credit to whoever did this (if you let me know I will credit that person here) and thought, “I want this!” If you are interested I have a Pinterest page devoted to scenery. Look for Nik Green. I highly recommend Pinterest as a resource for keeping ideas from all over the interweb neat and tidy and in one place.
I got the dimensions of a Kill Team board, thirty by twenty two inches, and got two sheets of chipboard cut.
Clamping the sides
Burning the splinters off the cheap wood frame
Trimming the foam for the inserts with my Proxxon
Foam inserts fitted
Playing around with ideas
Track chopped out and starting to detail the edges with strips of cork tile
A Lego wheel being used for detailing
Gravel from Walersee and fine river silt used for detailing
Building before and after painting
Starting to build up the layers
I made a pipeline out of some scrap pipe from a skip and some laser cut supports. I magnetised the feet so it could be removed for transportation.
Everything in situ
Silt! Silt everywhere!
Paint and weathering applied
Tuft mania
And then scatter
I think the scatter needs to be more yellow to match the tufts. Added to this was some water effects. Overall I am very happy with this board. Some minor tweeks as noted are required.
I’ve been thinking about this project for the last three months and the best way to present a table.
I had a table coutesy of Electric Love and I had the game, Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago.
I wanted islands for the game. What was the best way to approach this? The initial thought was to create some irregular shapes and make the contours with foam. Although they would look realistic there was only one drawback, they would not fit together to create other shapes.
What to do?
I went back to the roots of gaming and thought about hexagons. Looking at how other people had made hex terrain I made a jig to cut the foam.
Things would have been set, albeit with some hard work, to have a table ready for Salute. Then two things conspired against this.
My Wife’s Grandfather died last year. 93 with a full (SS on the Eastern Front, travels to Africa in a minibus, mountaineering, greatgrandchildren and good-health) life, before you ask. The family wanted to clear his house, including his workshop.
And at the same time we got a new neighbour who after moving in decided she didn’t like the wooden floor in her lounge. So it was ripped out and thrown in a skip. It was 20mm engineered, if that means anything to anyone, solid wood. Ever since doing the floor in the hobby room I’ve wanted a nice floor in the workshop. I’ve never had the money (can you hear those violins?) but now was my chance.
One view of how the workshop used to look.
Another view
The optimum time to strip out the workshop, lay the floor ready for shelving and tools was now.
Trimming wood with my new circular saw. I still have all my fingers BTW
First iteration of furniture arrangement
Possibly final arrangement
This obviously cut into the preparation time for Salute. Through previous Salutes and laser cutting I had met another gamer, Christoph. Previously of the Grune Horde and now the Tabletop Knights. He was also planning to run a table with GA. I proposed we join forces.
During this time I also started a couple of money making (success so far €4) projects. When I have time and unrestricted access to YouTube, not very often as The Clone Wars and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air are wayyy popular, I have been watching Mel’s Terrain Tutors channel. One personal project this year is to make a large amount of hedgeing for Flames of War/Tanks. To do this I would need a large amount of clump foliage. Mel showed how to make it relatively cheaply.
The main expense was purchasing the foam and over half of this cost was postage.
Don’t get me started on postage!
My Mothers old Kenwood came in handy
And you end up with a cup of foam
Mixing with PVA and Poundshop acrylic paint
A by-product of the manufacturing process was moss and litchen. Ground up even finer it was ideal for this.
Different colours to be blended when dry
The second money making project was a flockbox. I was not very happy with the quality of the grass tufts I had been making. It was OK but I knew I could do better. Mel’s channel had a video showing how he made static grass tufts. In it he used a flockbox.
I considered buying one but I couldn’t justify the forty quid PLUS the postage.
Luckily YouTube came to the rescue.
So with the help of eBay and my genius neighbour I made one.
The results are great.
Once all these jobs were done there was just about time to paint some scenery and paint my crew. See previous post.
Planning how to display my stock
The day of Salute arrived. The car had been packed the night before so we could set off without any panic or hesitation. Austrian Salute was at a new location, in Germany. The previous venue was looking for new owners, I wonder why? Christoph arrived and we set up. My heart fell a little. Although his modular terrain was a good concept the execution was not as good. No win for the best table then.
Walter giving his customary greeting speech
My tiny display table
Our gametable
The day went quickly although marred by another disasterous lunch. Why do culinary mishaps only happen to me?
On the plus side I did win second prize for the fantasy painting competition.
For the usual more eloquent description visit Sigur’s Battlebrush Studios site
As usual I’m far behind in my posts. Laziness, a trip to Legoland and starting work at Electric Love Festival. The ELF is my work for the next seven weeks with some very long days ahead the nearer the festival gets, so don’t expect much posting from me. If all goes to plan I want to by a small (400mm x 300mm) laser cutter with the money.
This was the event that I had been invited to the previous year and due to communication problems I didn’t make it. This year I did. Okay there were some problems with road signage and autobahn exits that were closed, but I was there.
It was advertised as a gaming day and it most definitely it was. There were three tournaments that day; Warhammer 40K, Infinity and Firestorm Armada. Also being played was Saga, Bolt Action, the ubiquitous Frostgrave, X-Wing Age of Sigmar, Kings of War, Force on Force, Kugelhagel and a very brief appearance of Test of Honour (replaced by Halo Fleet).
It was held in a much larger space than the Austrian Salute. The thing I have found at gaming days is that I felt very slim. The average physique on display was, politely, well rounded.
My display
There was a painting competition, which obviously I entered. I ended up with a third place in the Unit Category. I did expect to be higher ranked in this one as the quality of the other entries was okayish, in the other categories there was better painting so I didn’t expect much there.
Painting competition area
Roll-the-Dice was trading there http://www.roll-the-dice.de
And I had an interesting chat with Martin, the proprietor.
Walter (Austrian Salute) was there and it was nice to see him. We chatted about the new edition of Warhammer 40K coming soon. And he managed to chat me out of some money for when it is launched.
There was a pro painter there http://www.crissis-bemalservive.de
She wasn’t up to the standard of Sigur of Battlebrush studios but she did have some interesting iridescent effects, but not using nail products which I am currently researching.
The lunch was mediocre, luke warm, but the service was excellent.
I didn’t demo the game at all and hardly sold anything. But I had some excellent conversations with people there.
Number One Son eying up a scratch built titan.
Overall it was a pleasant day, not sure if it is worth the effort though. Quite a lot of traveling for very little result. I’ll have to ponder whether I want to attend again.
genuine grumpy old tin 