Gaming Board

I finished the table this weekend! The picture below is Thursday night after we glued the foam to the plywood.



The
next morning we trimmed the edges where they were rough, and sanded the
surface for texture, and carved out the river and the hills. There
aren't any good pictures of that.

Once that was all done we primed the boards.



You can see the hill board under the table.



Then we painted the board.



And added flock - in this case woodland scenic's earth blend.


And static grass.

Once that was done and drying we got to work on the trees. We started by cutting out bases to put the dowels onto.



We used the hole saw to cut out the base, and then clamped them down and drilled out a hole for the dowels.



We
cut the top of the dowels into points and cut disks of green scrub pads
to make very inexpensive pine trees. They aren't very realistic, I
know, but they do convey tree pretty well, and for now that's enough.
When I have more time and money I want to pick up several packs of
Woodland Scenics trees.





Once
all the trees were done I spray painted them with a can of GW's Dark
Angels Green, and then with a couple of lighter shades dusted on that.


Of course whats the point of having a gaming table if you aren't going to play a game on it???



My
cousins and I played a pretty epic game of Lord of the Rings. We used
basically every painted mini we had (no character doubles though
otherwise there would have been 7+ Aragorns!) and a number of unpainted
ones (mostly orcs).



We
played a "kill the captains" style scenario - The good captains being
Aragorn and Frodo and the evil ones being Saruman and the Witch King.



The mumak never made it into combat, coming in late in the game as a reserve.



This
is the end of the game. Gimli, Gandalf and a captain of Minas Tirith
heroicly swept into the Witch King, as Eomir and a Rohirim charged and
killed Saruman and Grima.



And of course, the obligatory hamster for scale picture!



Now I just need to get back into my Hirst Arts molds and get casting to build some ruins!

Wow! Congratulations on that huge table. That looks like a massive battle

And that hamster is just so cute!

Looking very good indeed!!! Both the table and the hamster!

Just goes to prove that with a bit of effort you can make great tables in a small amount of time.

And a fine battle too it seems!!

Was the hamster on the good or the evil side?

Damn impressive. I thoroughly enjoyed your post. And those trees actually look quite easy to make, and not bad at all.

LOOKIN' GOOD!
VERY NICE gound effect. The trees initially looked a bit strange, BUT the more I look at them the better they look. VERY COOL Hamster...he'd be happier with some Skaven roaming the table . WELL DONE!

Very cool! Love the table! That battle looks epic... Now I'm going to have to actually look into the Lord of the Rings stuff. I am a HUGE Lord of the Rings fan and collector and have been resisting the tabletop game because I just know I'd blow a TON of money on it.

Awesome table! Great job and happy many games on it.

Great job.

Like most hamsters, this one was on it's own side, and will take out troops indiscriminately. It has rules very similar to the mumak with it's impressive trample ability and an even more fearsome grab and swallow/pouch attack.

Defenala - I feel exactly the same way about the trees. When they were first done I felt like I'd wasted my time. By the time we started to game they didn't really bother me. By the end of the game I thought they were fine!

And it was great having my cousins around to help, both with getting the actual work done, but also with motivation. I was rarely distracted from out task because they were around. We kept each other focused and motivated.

Thanks for the comments! I'm starting to work on Amon Hen now. I'll post as I make progress.