Starting to plan a gaming table need some advice/help

[Guest]

hi all. I'm starting to think about building a gaming table and could use some advice. I would like to build a modular city fight table. The GW board has a lot of features that I like, the movable tiles, the detail etc. but I don't like that when you put a ruined building like those made by GW, the rubble that would accompany such destruction is noticeably absent.

 

my thought was to build a 12''x12'' tiles with buildings/appropriate rubble/streets all permanently modeled onto the tile permanently. to make them more modular, I was thinking that i would put half of a street on the edge of the tile, so that two tiles set next to each other would make a complete section of road. 

 

My practical questions are as follows:

1, does this idea seem plausible/doable. 

2: How wide does a road section need to be. I think I should like to fit superheavy tanks (baneblades etc.)

3: Does 12" x 12" seem too small? I know that Secret Weapon is making tiles that are 12"x12" but GW uses 2'x2'

 

Thanks in advance for the input.

[Teetengee]

I think it will work fine, and remember, you can always have tiles of varying sizes as long as they are multiples of your smallest tile set. For instance a bunch of 1 foot squares and a couple 2 foot by 2 foot pieces, or a 1 foot by 3 foot piece.
(Perhaps fortresses and rivers might work well that way)

[Guest]

thanks for that advice, any thoughts on road width? how wide would it need to fit, say one of the AM superheavy tanks?

[Teetengee]

6-8 inches (so 3-4 on each tile that you have road on)

[SW1]

The idea is a sound one. I'm about to work on a few tables over the next couple of weeks. Just getting the final pieces together.

 

Of you want moveable terrain there are two easier ways of doing it. The simplest way is to have a base board that everything sits on and have that textured and painted as road surface. Then build ruins/buildings on self contained sections with a bit of sidewalk around each piece. Also have some additional bits of none road which will help mark out where the roads are.

 

The next easiest option is to have a base board painted up in the rubble colours. Build separate sections of road to sit on the board and site the building gs inbetween the roads.

 

Both options won't give you the option of as detailed a base board but this can be made up for with the detail you can put on the parts you use to place ontop. Both give the advantage of not easily being knocked out of place.

 

The multiple smaller board sections need a separate base board ideally with a lip all around to keep things in place. You can then go to town with the details on the base boards. Just make sure they all have shared points so when placed together they line up well. This is more of an advanced option and the one I'm going for. It's really worth putting plenty of planning into this testing layouts on paper before putting into action.

[Gurth]

any thoughts on road width?

What games are you going to use this table for, and how wide are the largest vehicles for those games? When you know that, you can halve that width and add a little bit to arrive at a good width for your roads. From this you can also decide if your tile size is good or too small: if the road takes up more than, say, a quarter to a third of the tile, I’d consider choosing a larger size for the tiles.

 

Don’t forget that you’re not really bound by any standard sizes, if you don’t want to be. No idea how things work around where you live, but over here any place that sells wood etc. will saw it to size at no extra charge. When I wanted blank tiles for use with my set of Miniature Scenery Battlegrounds tiles, I just had the store saw a sheet of 6-mm MDF into 27.4-cm squares. (No idea why the tiles in the set are that size — it makes no sense in either centimeters or inches.)

[SW1]

When you start building the table make a blog in the WIP section. There's a little bit of a resurgence on people making scenery of late on the board and it's good to bounce ideas off eachother.

[GodEmperorOfMankind]

I've been doing exactly this, making foot by foot squares of modular terrain. Nothing fancy, mainly road sections and such. Check out my thread if you like? I've made my roads 4" wide down one edge of the tile,fits a chimera chassis snugly, and I can double road sections against each other to make a main road 8" wide, just big enough to fit a baneblade.