Building a portable gaming board, part 4

 This is part four, here is part three.

Prior to a small friendly tournament in the beginning of June, I finished my gaming board.
I applied a couple of layers of earth/mud brown color with a sponge and large flat brush (using dry brushing strokes, but with quite a lot of paint in the brush)

Tools!

Work in progress

After three layers of increasingly brighter brown

Table ready for tournament!

 I'm quite satisfied with the result, although some lessons were learnt:

• Don't glue the MDF boards and styrofoam together until you are finished with painting
• Work with the whole gaming board all the time, don't do one MDF board at a time, the texture on the three boards will turn out very differently if you do.
• Apply paint in random patterns/circles. Don't work from one edge to another (if you mix new paint at some point, you will have a noticeable change in color on the board)
• Don't use wet sand
• Don't mix glue and sand. Apply glue and then sand. 
• You might not want that last layer of highlight color all over the board... :)

Building a portable gaming board, part 3

This is part three, here is part two.

I was not entirely happy with the resulting texture of my sand+glue mix, so I started to experiment a bit with plaster, glue and dry sand. In short I added some spots of filler to make the board a bit more even, and also to create a greater variation in the texture of the surface. I then applied watered down PVA glue over the board and added dry sand to improve the texture.

PVA glue/water mix + dry sand = love?

Satisfied with the texture I moved on to painting the boards. Starting with a base coat of black acrylic paint.

Three boards require lots of paint...

All three boards base colored.

Texture close-up

As the watered down black paint didn't cover exactly as well as I have hoped for, I might add a second layer of black before moving on to dry brushing.

Building a portable gaming board, part 2

This is part two, here is part one.

After some texture experiments I decided to apply a mix of sand and glue to my portable gaming board.

1 part PVA glue and 5 parts (wet) sand were mixed and applied to the surface of each gaming board. If the sand would have been dry, adding water would have been necessary. 

I used approximately 7-8 dl glue for all three boards.

I used a large brush to apply the mix onto the surface, and a roller to even the mixture on the board. 

Yummy!

One board done.

One improvement I came to think of during the work process is that I probably should have placed all three boards side by side when applying sand, to get a more seamless appearance. Although, it should be quite easy to fix with a thin second layer of sand on the edges.

Caution! Brushes and rollers involved in this process will not be usable for painting afterwards. 

Building a portable gaming board, part 1

Tonight I started building a portable gaming board, inspired by painter dad's approach. Instead of a gaming mat I'm using 4mm mdf to make it slightly more sturdy.
The styrofoam boards (3x 120x60cm) will be will be slightly smaller than the mdf boards, so I let the friendly guys at the lumberyard saw three pieces of mdf (1x 122x60cm and 2x 122x61,5cm). The 122x60 will be the center board, with no mdf outside the styrofoam on the longsides.

Applying glue

Gluing the styrofoam board to the mdf board

All three boards glued, applying some pressure ;)

At this point I haven't decided on a ground texture. Xenos world or jungle theme?

DIY Lightbox

Created a lightbox for miniature photography, following this easy tutorial. The lamps on the sides are the cheapest I could find at IKEA (39 SEK each), the top lamp is my regular desk lamp. I'm quite happy how well it turned out for such a small effort invested!

The setup

Result of Striking Scorpion in lightbox. f/5.6, 1/5 sec, ISO100, 135mm

Apprentice craftsman

The final result of my first stab at terrain crafting is pictured above. Partly a revisit to a previous blog entry, but also some new adventures. I have taught myself a valuable lesson here; to be efficient in terrain crafting from XPS styrofoam I need to procure one of these. The task is a bit too arduous and messy otherwise.

Nevertheless, I am somewhat pleased with the result. Some people have questioned my choice of Stonehenge-like gateway. Does it really fit into the 40k universe? Well, perhaps not. But the shape is quite easy to craft, it has a bit of flair to it and it has interesting LOS characteristics.

Note to self: go for lighter shades of grey when basecoating stone terrain. I did too many dark layers on these ones. One basecoat and two drybrushings should be enough.

Peace out,
Painter Dude

Tabula rasa, part 2

As promised yesterday, here is the second part of my effort to make a lightweight, modular full-sized game table. Hopefully I will either help someone make their own or inspire people who think my version is crap to make an even better one!

After drying overnight, the glue will now have a firm grip on the Citadel Battlemat. Time to trim off the excess fabric. I used scissors, but to get really straight and clean edges I recommend using a scalpel or a sharp carpet knife.

Next up I lined the underside edges with masking tape. The idea here is to keep the styrofoam from chipping off, which it has an annoying tendency to do.

And presto! A finished game table with just a couple of hours of work. It can be laid out over almost any table in either 4'x4' or 4'x6' configurations. I must admit it will be rather sensitive to pressure. But not much of it is sticking out on each side of the table, and rule #1 of my table will be "no elbows". Worst case scenario: I will have to strengthen the boards with thin MDF on the underside.

As you can see on this last picture the game table stacks to a pretty reasonable size, which I plan to tuck away in my man closet when not used. Total cash spent is:
Citadel Battlemat: 25 €
Styrofoam boards: 8 €
750 ml glue bottle: 4 € (only used half of it)
The sum of all ingredients thus comes in under 40 €, which is nice.

Please tell me if you did something better or more clever, I am always interested in seeing cool projects!

Be safe,
PD

Tabula rasa, part 1

The problem with the imperial system is that noone uses it. Not even standard European dining tables. I don't know anyone who actually owns a 6'x4' table. Playing on the floor is a solution, but with us old dads (passed 30 this year) and the dog running over the battlefield it is just not practical.

Therefore, I needed a modular and lightweight gaming table with a nice texture that I could easily take out and then stow away to keep the missus happy. Cheap is also good when you're a dad, so price was definitely a factor.

Enter the StyroTable! I purchased a Citadel Battlemat, three styrofoam insulation boards that just happen to be 1200x600 mm (~4'x2') and a bottle of white glue. As I am typing this the project is drying over night, so this will be a two part tutorial.

First, cover your work surface in case you are the clumsy type (I am). Then lay out one of the boards.

Yes, the picture shows two boards. Stop being such a besserwisser. Now, grab your white glue and glue the living daylight out of that sucker. No, seriously - don't use too much glue. But pay attention to the edges. I used a spackle spatula to spread it out a bit more evenly. Don't worry, it's easy to fix dry patches around the edges with a bit of glue on your finger when it has dried the day after.

Measure up and cut the battlemat in three pieces of the same size. Folding the cloth over itself and then cutting along the edge helps keeping it straight, but you will have to trim excess cloth afterwards anyway. I used a friend, a wife and household scissors to achieve cosmic straightness.

Put the cloth down over the glue from the middle and out to avoid getting glue on the grassy side. Then stretch along the edges and use your palm to iron out any creases. Break out all your heavy books or other suitable weights to keep the whole thing secure during the night.

Looks promising, eh? Stay tuned for part 2!

xoxo,

Gossip Dad