Tabletops with dramatic elevation

[cacofold]

I've been very interested lately in creating custom tabletops that aren't as flat as a... table. As a kid, I was inspired by my grandfather's model railroad layouts that had rolling hills and mountains. I decided to make a small 3'x3' board for use in skirmish games. I also wanted to pack as much interesting looking elevation as possible.

My final plan sketch. Red is the cliff face, blue is a stream, pink the roads, and pencil the elevation contours. I decided to use 2" thick insulation foam. I experimented with miniatures to find a reasonable maximum slope that wouldn't tip my miniatures over. 1:3 for height:width was what I decided to use. Since I have 2"thick foam, that meant a 6" wide slope, or a minimum of 3 boxes on the graph paper scale.


Next time, I'll use 1" foam as it was very difficult to cut the long slopes in one pass using my foam cutter. Plan in hand, I got to assembling. I used a mix of wargame and model railroad techniques. Most of the the ideas came from this forum. Plywood square base, foam attached with liquid nails construction adhesive. Rocks cast from plaster using woodlands scenics rock molds. Plaster rocks attached using liquid nails. Drywall compound to patch the rough parts. Paint sand and glue mixed to make the ground. Drybrush greys on the rocks. Scenic cement and flock in alternating layers. The final coat was a mix of polycrylic varnish mixed with water which locks everything down and prevents the flock from coming up during play.

I have a few construction photos, but this one gives the general idea.


Next, some water effects and tree style flock for shrubs. I have a couple cowboys for scale on the finished board. I'm pretty pleased with the final product. There are lots of flat spaces for scatter terrain, buildings, and rolling dice.


Now, the construction of this board is pretty standard, but elevation on a gaming board is a bit more rare. As I discovered in prototyping, the lines of sight you get are very interesting. The person on the top doesn't necessarily have the advantage since the contour edges and rocks on the hills block line of sight.  The roll off for table edges has consequences. Here is a shot of a figure on the middle level edge looking up at a figure on the top level far side. You can see that he is partially obscured for cover.


And here is one of a figure on the middle level  outer edge looking down the road to a figure on the lower level outer edge. You can see that if the far figure moved off the road to the left or right he would be entirely hidden.


I would really like to start building full sized 6'x4' tables with this same sort of elevation, but I'm sort of stuck for ideas for topography. This small square table is a simple spiral staircase basically, with three flat area "landings". The same idea doesn't quite work when stretched out to a rectangle twice the size. Does anyone have any ideas or examples of tables with interesting lines of sight caused by elevation?

[carlos13th]

Looking great mate.

[Captain Blood]

Excellent. That's the way to do it 

[nic-e]

the lack of "stepped" hills makes it look wonderfully realistic, i love it

[OSHIROmodels]

That's a very nice result 

The ground work is particulary good 

Will you be doing more that fit with this or is it a one off?

cheers

James

[FramFramson]

LOVE proper terrain. Having your boards not be flat goes a long way towards making the ground look real.

[Eric the Shed]

Brilliant!

[Mason]

Stunning!
 

[cheetor]

Thats picture postcard beautiful. 

I cant bring myself to be locked into one gaming set up like that - too many projects and plans/not enough storage space etc, but when I see display quality pieces like this I do get pangs.

Lovely.

[gnomehome]

Fantastic table - I'd love to see more WIP pictures as well.

I wish I could make something as good looking as this....

[Hu Rhu]

Fantastic table - I'd love to see more WIP pictures as well.

+1.   Fantastic looking terrain board.  How did you do the grass effect? 

[Rob_bresnen]

I have always wanted a table like that- flat is boring (and not very realistic)

[dijit]

Very nice, I've often thought of doing the same, but then the problem of storage and wanting interchangeability means it doesn't happen. A very board though and wonderfully finished.

[cacofold]

Thanks for all the kind words everyone! Since folks were asking for construction pics, here are some random ones.

Stacking up rough cut foam to check the line of sight with some figures laying around.


Plaster rocks attached with construction adhesive and gaps and slopes covered with drywall. Figure I would coat it the whole board in it, but in retrospect that wasn't necessary for the flat parts.


First coat of water/glue/paint/sand for the dirt. Used cheap house paint samples. This was followed by two additional drybrushes of lighter browns also using cheap house paint.


First layer of flock, using the method in the video below. I was kinda skeptical of the scenic cement nonsense but it worked pretty well.

+1.   Fantastic looking terrain board.  How did you do the grass effect? 

I used the power of.... The Clinic.
Charmingly dated video that basically runs down the Woodland Scenics method of making model railroad terrain, but it would work with any flock you can find. The stuff about benchwork and underlayment isn't too useful for wargame boards as their method is both heavy and prone to cracking when moved. But all the terrain work I did is lifted right from here.
Where I deviated:

• Underlayment is foam sheets.
• Rocks are drybrushed, as I wanted to add things like resin dry stack rock walls to match the same color. Their rock color system works on soaking into white plaster and wouldn't work on resin castings.
• Hit the final product with polycrylic varnish and water in a spray bottle.

That's a very nice result 

The ground work is particulary good 

Will you be doing more that fit with this or is it a one off?

cheers

James

This is a prototype for the construction method. I'm debating opening a game store in 6-12 months and I was testing out making really nice boards as a feature to draw people in. I'd also sell the finished ones after they were in the store a bit and make new ones to help with the rent and also keep fresh boards. The material cost is around $150 for a 6'x4' board, which is about the wholesale price of the typical plastic GW board I see in most stores.

My next specific project is going to be a 6'x4' commission for a friend. He wants a desert board to demo a Rogue Trader game in october. The size of the board leads me into my topic:

What I really want to spark is a discussion about elevation/topography on single piece boards. I think there is a lot of good info out there for modular tiles. If someone asked advice about modular terrain we could all rattle off the tile shapes you would want to make: plain flat, corner hill, side hill, straight road, corner road, T shaped road, straight river, corner river, etc etc. For single piece boards there is less out there. As I sat down to sketch out my friend's board, I found that I was mimicking modular board shapes: the one with hills on the corners, the ones with two roughly equal sized hills on each long side.

So I really sat down and racked my brain and came up with this:

White area is the "base level" of the board. Dark red is the "top level" of the board, probably 3 inches high. Light red areas are sloped between high and low. Black lines with hashes are exposed rock faces. White line is a road. Blue lines are dry riverbed.

Anyone have any other examples of boards with lots of different elevations and topography?

[S_P]

Great stuff- really like that- just wish I had space to store it.