Tabletop Scenery

Hello friends,
we are couple of enthusiasts who, back in 1997,
started to create scenic pieces for our own gaming table. As time
passed, our skills evolved and the projects became more and more
complex and challenging. In 2007, having reached the high-quality
level, we've decided to start production and casting of highly
realistic terrain features in resin, suitable for wargames and static
modeling.

When constructing buildings, we always want them to
look as close to a real life as possible. The thing that distinguishes
us the most from the other manufacturers is the fact that we actually
build our stone walls, stone by stone, as in real life. It's very time
consuming, but worth the effort. It's the only way to achieve the
natural look of a stone wall!

Here's what we have done so far:

Guard Tower:



Town Square:



Medieval Inn:



And here are some WIP pictures of the Blacksmith's Forge that we are doing right now:




Comments and criticism are more than welcome!

Feel free to contact us at: tabletopworld@yahoo.com

Awesome, plain awesome! I love your terrain. I can really see how long you guys have been building terrain, the attention to detail is phenomenal!

I sure would be interested in terrain like this, are the prices reasonable compared to Forgeworld?


Cheers!

lol, Mladen, is it you? It's pretty damn small world..

Said it before: your scenery is incredible! The forge has a evolved a lot since I last checked. Awesome!

And yes, their prices are totally reasonable and I will be making a few purchases myself soon.

Wowzer!

VERY NICE, PROFESSIONAL QUALITY STUFF!

It's cool to see SOMEONE making some $s with their talent in the Scenery Thing. BEAUTIFUL WORK!
There are MANY ideas to steal here.

Thanks people for such great comments

Pfreck wrote:

Awesome, plain awesome! I love your terrain. I can really see how long you guys have been building terrain, the attention to detail is phenomenal!

I sure would be interested in terrain like this, are the prices reasonable compared to Forgeworld?


Cheers!

Thanx, we are trying to go as high-detaild as possible. The prices are reasonable in my opinion, a bit lower than FW

cianty wrote:

lol, Mladen, is it you? It's pretty damn small world..

Said it before: your scenery is incredible! The forge has a evolved a lot since I last checked. Awesome!

And yes, their prices are totally reasonable and I will be making a few purchases myself soon.

Oh, hi Chris, great to hear such a good comment from you thanx. Are we allowed to discus exact prices here on the forum?

DeafNala wrote:

VERY NICE, PROFESSIONAL QUALITY STUFF!

It's cool to see SOMEONE making some $s with their talent in the Scenery Thing. BEAUTIFUL WORK!
There are MANY ideas to steal here.

wow, 2 moderators and 2 great posts I guess we are pretty good than, huh? thanx, feel free to "steal" any idea.


For any questions you all might have (prices, dimensions, specific order about any individual part....) feel free to contact us at tabletopworld@yahoo.com

Tabletop World wrote:

cianty wrote:

lol, Mladen, is it you? It's pretty damn small world..

Said it before: your scenery is incredible! The forge has a evolved a lot since I last checked. Awesome!

And yes, their prices are totally reasonable and I will be making a few purchases myself soon.

Oh, hi Chris, great to hear such a good comment from you thanx.

Oh, you are welcome! You more than deserve it!

Tabletop World wrote:

Are we allowed to discus exact prices here on the forum?

Sure, just go ahead!

This forum, although with a clear "Mordheim by Games Workshop" focus, is in no way officially connected to the company. Everyone is free to express his opinion on prices, alternate miniatures/scenery manufacturers, anything.

You guys really need to set up a website, by the way. I think PayPal offers good possibilities of doing a simple page with a PayPal shopping cart. This would be a huge step in spreading the word. I was going to write a article/review on your stuff some day for my blog.

And how about providing a link to your photobucket account? I liked that I could see sneak peaks of the Blacksmith Forge on there.

Wow, great pieces The level of detail and the realistic look are awesome.

We could as well make a sticky thread in the Trading Pit, by the way.

cianty wrote:

You guys really need to set up a website, by the way. I think PayPal offers good possibilities of doing a simple page with a PayPal shopping cart. This would be a huge step in spreading the word. I was going to write a article/review on your stuff some day for my blog.

And how about providing a link to your photobucket account? I liked that I could see sneak peaks of the Blacksmith Forge on there.

Thanx for allowing us to share our product with evrybody here (prices and all)
The web site will be operational in a month (maybe even sooner) and it's a proper one .
I checked your work, you are really a great modeler+painter. We would really be honoured if we become the part of your blog.

Tabletop World wrote:

The web site will be operational in a month (maybe even sooner) and it's a proper one .

Glad to hear read that. I look forward to your finished sample of the forge with roof and everything.

Ok, so the prices are as folows :

Guard Tower: 50€ (what you get)

Medieval Inn: 45€ (what you get)

Town Square price depends on the size of it. Bigger order-bigger discount. The one that we painted consists of 6 center and 14 border pieces. The size is 27x20cm (10x8in) and it's price is 20€.(what you get)

Our PhotoBucket account

Wow! Good deal!

Tabletop World wrote:

..wow, 2 moderators and 2 great posts..

Make that 3

and I have to say, These things are freakin' AWESOME!
I think they're really worth it! so, when do the marketplaces and ruined houses appear ?
Keep up the good work man! I love them!

matt wrote:

I think they're really worth it! so, when do the marketplaces and ruined houses appear ?

This is a good point. Can you tell us what other buildings you are working on? Any plans yet? I'd love to get some sneak peeks... Maybe.. uhm.. a huge mansion, town hall, library, prison building...

cianty wrote:

matt wrote:

I think they're really worth it! so, when do the marketplaces and ruined houses appear ?

This is a good point. Can you tell us what other buildings you are working on? Any plans yet? I'd love to get some sneak peeks... Maybe.. uhm.. a huge mansion, town hall, library, prison building...

Well, here's the thing. We are currently finishing Blacksmith (molded the roof yesterday). After that we are debating on windmill, small town house or Mordheim ruin. We don't know what is the best way to go. Small cheaper model? Large projects? WHF? Mordheim?
What do you guys think?

And, off course, thanx for your great support and comments.

Tabletop World

Your scenery is really cool, it has such a realistic look! Keep up the great work.

Personally, I think small, undamaged village and town houses are the way to go. They are versatile and can be used for Warhammer, Mordheim and various other games, and it's more difficult to make a house with detachable floors and roof on your own than to glue together some basic ruins. Furthermore, town houses can accompany the market place, which is not bad from a sales point of view

Oh, and I think a Coaching Inn would be a bestseller Everyone loves Coaching Inns. As for large buildings, I think a church or temple is a good place to start - it's not too big (well, it needn't be) and always adds a lot of character to a gaming table.

small building is probably best for starters... low producing cost, higher number of orders...

and of course a windmill is just plain Awesome! but won't sell that much I think, as it is rather specific...
But yeah, your stuff looks awesome...
And if I didn't like building everything myself so much, I would have purchased some of your buildings..

Well, at the risk of seeming biased, which, OF COURSE I am , I'd go with the Mordheim ruins; re, while a Mordheim piece would work well in WHFB the reverse is not necessarily true. Having multipurpose pieces increases their potential market.

I'm a big fan of large &/or tall buildings so take the following cum grano salo. A big, complex building would be OH SO COOL, AND, if it could be broken down into sections that could be used separately so much the better.

I'll go with my personal preferences first: I want huge awesome models. I recently bought the Governor's mansion for Resina Planet for 80+15 EUR. I am well aware that huge resin buildings cost a lot of money and I am willing to save and shell out the bucks for quality work. I can do simple buildings myself but huge houses, with complex structure take a lot of time so it is well worth casting these kinds of buildings in resin. I'd love to see more huge high quality resin houses.

With that being said, you as a company, have to consider the habits, attitudes and niggardliness of the customers. Everyone wants to have great scenery but most people aren't willing to spend a fair amount of money on them. Despite the money "saved" when playing Mordheim or similar skirmish systems (compared to armies like in Warhammer) they don't like to buy buildings for 200 EUR. I've talked to people who used to build and sell scenery for ebay and I can tell from my own observations that people don't spend the appropriate money on buildings. I know how long it takes to build and paint a huge house but there seems to be a common limit of what people are willing to spend on a piece of scenery.

Why do I say this: Because I think that you can sell smaller houses much easier. People are more likely to spend 20 EUR on a great small house than 50 an huge one. This is sad to me, as that's the reason why there are so few companies producing properly sized quality buildings. The ForgeWorld stuff is far from expensive - especially with the current down of the GBP. 25 GBP for such an amazing Forge - come on! That's far from expensive! Even the great Coaching Inn isn't that expensive conidering it is a huge detailed building with a modelled interior. Players are stupid enough to spend 10 EUR on a Warhammer model when they can have the same quality from other producers for half the price (and less) but when it comes to scenery they start miming Scrooge McDuck.

Alright, here's what I'd do:

- Make one smaller building - this is good for people to get a chance to check out your stuff for a low price. If they are convinced of the quality they might buy more and bigger buildings. Also, a smaller bulding might be bought while making a purchase because the customer is thinking "Heck, if I am buying already, might as well add this sweet little house for a little more money". Saving shipping is probably key here, because if you can add a small building without increasing the shipping costs (or getting a generous discount on shipping) then these might sell to those who actually wanted to buy something else and just bought this as well.
- Ruined buildings: Don't underestimate the Mordheim community. There are lots of people joining here on TBMF and on the Mordheim Yahoo group every day (I approve like at leat one new person there per day). Most Mordheim players believe that closed buildings are bad for skirmish games like Mordheim (something I will have to try to correct with an article on my blog some day) so they shy away from those. This is probably due to them only knowing the sample scenery from the rulebook or god knows what. So if you offer a few awesome ruins then you can get especially Mordheim players to make a few purchases (and they might add the one or other building while they're at it as described above). So ruins are really great for getting the attention of Mordheim players.
- Huge buildings: Alright, these are probably most interesting for older, serious gamers. They might make for great christmas presents too. I know I don't care for small boring buildings. I want huge houses with at least 2 floors + attic. Everything else is just lame and boring. I really like what you have come up with so far and I do hope that you will make at least one even bigger building.


Alright, i hope this rather lenghtly post was worth anything to you. Thanks for reading.

Oh, lots's of posts while I wrote my essay/ranting.

Something about the windwill: While this would certainly look totally awesome I agree with Ezekiel. A windmill is very restricted. You cannot combine it will too many buildings as it fits a rural setting best. So it is perfect for Empire in Flames Mordheim setting but unless you plan to prduce corn field I don't think that many people would be seriously interested in these.

I wonder if you could - from a casting point of view - produce buildings with a full interior and removable roofs. This would definately be the best as it combines the advantages of ruins (skirmish game use) and the awesome look that Warhammer type of players are interested (they could always just ignore the interior).

Does the person who offers the best selling advice get a building for free?

Eliazar wrote:

Does the person who offers the best selling advice get a building for free?

LOL. Great idea. I do accept donations for my current gaming table. If anyone's interested...

Thank you all for your suggestions and great observations!!
Cianty, thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts. We could not agree more with what you have said!
So our conclusion is...we're going to make a small town house or cottage next, and see how will that work. After that, maybe a Mordheim ruin.
In time we will definitely build something huge ('cause it's our passion to build something colossal), and we can only hope that there are more people like you guys, who will appreciate our time and effort spent to build such a thing.

WOW !!! I like these buildings a lot, and I'm agree with Cianty : it's far from expensive !!!
I think I will wait a little to command, because I want to make a various table, and make just one command (for less shipping fee ), so in the future, when you will have some other buildings in your "catalog", I swear I will command !!!

cianty wrote:

Oh, lots's of posts while I wrote my essay/ranting.
I wonder if you could - from a casting point of view - produce buildings with a full interior and removable roofs. This would definately be the best as it combines the advantages of ruins (skirmish game use) and the awesome look that Warhammer type of players are interested (they could always just ignore the interior).

Yes, this can be done, but is the most difficult thing to do. That by it's self is not a problem. The problem is time and amount of material that is needed for such a project. It's very time consuming and I wonder if it would pay out (since both the time & material spent on a project increase the price pf the product).

Eliazar wrote:

Does the person who offers the best selling advice get a building for free?

Maybe...if we find the advice worthwhile.

Lanyssa Ryssyll wrote:

WOW !!! I like these buildings a lot, and I'm agree with Cianty : it's far from expensive !!!
I
think I will wait a little to command, because I want to make a various
table, and make just one command (for less shipping fee ), so in the future, when you will have some other buildings in your "catalog", I swear I will command !!!

Thanx man!