I've been long debating between an ice world outpost, an industrial zone, and a slummy city board to make next, so naturally, I'm doing something totally different. I got the idea from reading my old 40k Catachans codex, where they give rules for a Jungle table. Essentially the premise is that the whole table is terrain, while you use terrain pieces to define what isn't... if that makes sense. It also helps that I already had the supplies. I had a bit of a stash of art board (similar to MDF), which I use to base terrain, and started cutting out rough blob shapes for my islands. Next I got out my trusty hot wire cutter and went to town on a sheet of pink foam I'd been saving for some future project that'll never happen. After gluing the foam to the sheet, I got to texturing the edges. This was done with a long razor blade, a wire brush, and the occasional nervous glance from my wife, as I hacked away. Next up is the spackling! Once I get an island finished from beginning to end, I'll be sure to make a tutorial.
I love how your dog is just looking at you wondering what your doing. It looks great can't wait to see the finish with your full terrain layout.
Got the spackling finished and glue down the sand. For how I got the texture, I started by doing a series of horizontal and vertical cuts, kind of randomly spread out, more horizontal than vertical. After I did that, I attacked the outside with a wire brush, running it back and forth horizontally, and let it rip out bits of foam. It made a hell of a mess, but it looks very natural. I used spackling compound to fill any unnatural looking lines (like the lines built into the sheets of foam), and to smooth out any areas I wanted to add sand to. Once that cured I used archival book binding PVA glue to stick the sand down. It works a lot better than other glues I've tried, and lasts forever.
I like the table design and the progress you just made. Really looking forward to see it getting done.
How expensive is that PVA? Is it water resistant once dry? Why not cheap acrylic paint (and get a starting color)?
Really depends on the pva (it is made in exterior grade AND interior grade, and the exterior is MORE water resistant, but PVA is never truly water-PROOF). It's not that expensive, it's basically wood glue - but it glues foam and card and mdf and so forth, but won't glue plastics to anything).
Not that expensive, about $7.50 for an 8oz bottle. It is somewhat water resistant, you'd really have to soak it to make it wet again. Mostly I like PVA because it's more flexible and chip resistant than mixing it with paint would be. Wood glue would probably work well too, it is also typically a PVA glue anyhow, I just prefer my book binding glue, it hasn't let me down yet, haha.
We tested out the terrain last night. It was a HELL OF A LOT OF FUN! Honestly, since this is my second table that has a lot of non-city terrain, I'm really getting used to playing with a lot of difficult terrain movement, and I think it is sorely missed by most players/tournaments. Not everything in the Infinity universe is a city or space ship, haha. Our obvious take away was that it needed more vertical terrain, which we anticipated since I haven't got all my jungle terrain based, and am waiting on a efw more rock formations, which would add a lot of LOF blocking terrain. I may also put a couple of the shipping crates under the miter saw so I can have them sunk in the water.
Fallout 4 has a TON of ideas for scenery, the coastlines are filled with half-sunken containers, the roads with checkpoints... discarding the "abandoned and decayed" (too much grimdark for Infinity!) theme gives a lot of ideas! I personally love the "deployable cover" you can see here and there (specially in Gunners "bases"), since I think it's easy to do with some wide cardboard and little inserts.
Nice job! I'm actualy working on something similar... a bit larger hills, less space between (jungle terrain), many bridges...
Sounds awesome, have any pics? I’ve considered treating my beaches as open terrain and just using the terrain rules for the water, but for now we are having fun with all the difficult terrain.
Built another terrain piece for the board. I wanted the centerpiece to drive the narrative of the table, I thought that representing a remote communication array would be perfect. Terrakami makes an amazing, and huge com-dish so I picked it up, assembled it, then filled in the bottom area so it’s better at blocking LOF.
Impressive! However, I hope it's a "dry fit", because if you can get your hands onto some plastic "engines" or even a 3D printer, you could place some "generators" inside of the dish's base (and rule that all LoF inside of it is nil, or if you need things to be as they look, use a mesh). I must admit that big pieces are more than impressive, but if you have limited storage space (like I do) then you cannot really afford to have many :(
I blocked off the base entirely with plasticard so there is no drawling LOF through it, that’s what all the white stuff is in the base. The dish itself isn’t glued in, that part is loose so you can rotate it and change the angle. I've added a bunch more details you can see here:
Yes! I was just suggesting to put some blocky generator instead, that could block LoF aswell, but look cool. Fallout 4's generators are quite interesting if you can get 2-3 of them, and you can mount them into a base that fits inside the Dish's base so you can use it as a separate piece if you don't wanna use the sat dish all the time ^^
Digging the island table. Feels a little sparse on cover terrain, though, maybe some guard rails on some of the bridges would be good? Also, I assume those islands are going to be loose and unattached so their position can be adjusted for various ITS scenarios? As you have it laid out, I can see issues with the placement of objectives.
