I got a bit of spraying done this afternoon, Pringles Tower is now undercoated! This was a thorough black undercoat followed by a thin grey undercoat followed by a distant/spotty white spray waved in the general direction of the tower: Plus I've been starting to collect expanded polystyrene packaging from local shops, although that's more for an upcoming 40k tournament that the club is putting on at the same time as the Infinity tournament. There are some quite good buttress shapes in there once the pieces are cut up: More on the spherical storage tank. First I held a marker pen horizontally on top of a cup the right height and used that to draw guide lines on the ball which were actually horizontal: Then some 1mm foamed PVC cut to size: PVC strip glued on, plus some thin card strips added underneath. A few cables leading up to the ball and some panels on the cone and I'm calling this one done as there's another eight balls to work through: Some non-grey paint on Pringles Tower! All metallic parts are now base-coated in Boltgun Metal, with the lower walkway mesh, computer access point and a few other bits washed with black paint/chestnut ink. Still to do - black/chestnut wash on the rest of the metallic areas including the ladder rungs (which were a pain to paint!), some detailing on the access point, painting the cables (you can see some yellow tests) and finally a few coats of spray varnish to reduce chipping. The end is in sight!
March 2011 In a short painting break this afternoon I managed to get the access point on Pringles Tower done: Time to start work on the tiles again. As the PVA plus sprinkled sand didn't work too well on the first tile I decided to try Sandtex paint with sand sprinkled on. To reduce the problem of paint strokes showing I tried to get the paint relatively even and then used a large brush end-on to stipple the surface, destroying the parallel lines from the first brush: That area had very vigorous stippling as the middle part of the tile didn't get enough and still showed some lines after sand application: Still better than the first tile, though. Here's all the upper surfaces and pavement edges sanded, plus one of the road surfaces painted thinly with Sandtex and stippled, it's going to need another layer to make it more robust: The other roadway hasn't been done yet as I need to cut away the crater/hole and put in another manhole. Some close-ups of the road texture now that the second coat has dried: Side by side with the urban stuff we're going to be working on new terrain for the upcoming tournament, including a couple of desert/Bourak tables with lots of 36mm expanded polystyrene mesas so that the forces have a choice of going across the open plateau or working their way through the ravines. Plus a few buildings, rocky outcrops and bushes... Doing it as scatter terrain is a lot easier and also more flexible as we can bunch it up for Infinity or spread things out into a few clumps for 40k. Plus it's neither scale-specific nor genre-specific, it can be used for 6mm, 15mm (potentially, not really got any 15mm SF forces) or 28mm and works as well for fantasy as SF. The biggest problem is getting rid of the blob structure on the sides of the mesas in a time-efficient way. We discussed this last night while organising tournament scenery and one of the club members came up with a great suggestion - texture the top surface with PVA + sand as per the small test piece I'd done, then give it a light coat of spray undercoat. This will make the exposed surface melt slightly, destroying the blobbiness. We can then go over the sides with textured paint and then it's ready to be painted. Hopefully they should be cheap and relatively easy/fast to do. Plus it's lightweight and really easy to store, all being the same thickness. An added bonus is that this kind of terrain is lovely to paint, pick a warmish beigy-yellow and you can add in all sorts of different tones and tints when sponge-painting it. Hmm. If anything, the spray paint didn't destroy the texture enough! It definitely hopes, though, as this before-and-after photo shows: I think with a skim of Polyfilla/PVA/sand mix on the sides that should look great. The white overspray is from 14-18" away, I'll have to make a note when I do some more. Courtesy of Johnny Hawkwind's pipette boxes, a super-size shipping/storage container: The usual black/grey/white spraying plus some Devlan Mud workedinto the creases and some dribbles painted on, plus some details picked out in black. The plates on the front and top are plasticard glued on to cover a label with non-waterbased-glue and a recycling symbol. As you can imagine, a bunch of these start filling a table very nicely. Now a great selection of scatter terrain put together and painted by Richard from the club, some of you may know him as DarkAngelDentist on Warseer:
April 2011 Making a slight change from the recent spam attacks, here's some scenery. It isn't urban, though... In preparation for the tournament in June I dug out a couple of area terrain bases that I made ages ago and then made a bunch of moveable bushes from aquarium plant sections glued into off-cuts of 3mm foamed PVC. These should work well as swampy areas. Here they are without the bushes: Plus a new one to join them. Being lazy, the pool edges are made from old Plasticine rather than something that will set properly, on the other hand it's easy to work and with the smooth low shapes that will be covered by PVA and sand/gravel it should hold up OK. In game terms I'm thinking of counting them as very difficult aquatic terrain and low vis zones with the bushes being purely decorative - they don't even block LoF/LoS. The rocks can be used as cover but it doesn't stack with the low-viz modifier. The pools count as cover in all directions if you're prone in them but may also have a special rule about standing up being a long skill instead of a short skill... A few shots of last night's tables, these were test games for the June tournament scenarios. Urban table with three blue Teleport Homers representing Civvies: Rural table, this will have more woodland and maybe some hills: Plus a variation on the bushes - after getting bored of cutting out foamed PVC offcuts I went to the hardware store looking for something and found some oversize screw covers. They were too bulky to paint green and have them disappear on the the ground but with some brown and grey paint they make great 'potted plants' for the urban table: I'll probably pick up some laser-cut ply discs for the rest of the ones for the swamps. The potted plants/swamp shrubs are not just the ends of aquarium plants but 1" sections from anywhere in the plant, we've got about six feet of the stuff! The original plan was to have low walls around the rooftops with breaks to allow some roof-to-roof bridges. It'll happen at some time, hopefully in time for the tournament but that will depend on all the other terrain. Some quick shots of the 4x4' table layout we're planning to use as a participation table next month at the local Legionary convention. The buildings in the middle of the cross-road is because I took the wrong tile in, that'll be the 'square roundabout' tile. We also got a couple of normal games in, testing one of the tournament missions. Notable in the first game - Shinobu Kitsune using her Superior Infiltration to appear behind my front rank of infiltrators with a failed roll, only to have my reserve model turn up behind her as a camo marker. A camo marker which revealed in ARO as a Prowler within Light Firethrower range. Oops. My front ranks, a bunch of Koalas and Minelayer Zeros (the Clockmaker was standing in as a second Moran Masaai) surround the Civvie represented by a blue GW Teleport Homer.
Manhole time! As with the first manhole ages ago in the thread I'm using some Platformer squares as over-size manhole covers but unlike the first one which was full of pipes these will just be holes, possibly with ladders down one side. Holes cut using the plastic square as a guide, as you can see they are a good height for use as temporary foxholes: As the hole is the same size as the cover, the cover falls in so I'm adding some thick card inner walls which will also be much harder-wearing than the blue foam. As the holes are 32mm square and the card is 1mm thick, four pieces 31mm long fit neatly: Glued in with PVA, once this is finally dry I'll take some filler and make the road surface flat up to the edges of the card: While doing some more prep work on the tiles (filling/priming the edges of the foamboard) I added sand to the swamp area: This is a thoroughly washed mix of sand and fine gravel from the beach, not quite a match for what was used on the old ones but should be OK. Onward ever onward! The next sewer entrance: Plus the Octagon on Quality Street: I added a 'plinth' around the bottom edge to hide the lip from the lid, some Rhino top-hatch doors on their sides as a secure set of doors and one of Antenociti's access panels. I still need to do some stairs and add a few random panels to the walls, then it's ready for spraying.
As we ended up with the large roundabout tile a sweet tin just happened to be the right size to fill the 'island' and therefore block gunfire down the road. I've now added a cable to hide the metal join and panels with wires to six of the faces, these will probably have printed adverts on them: The eighth side has a small roof and was going to have something like an ATM but will instead have a hanging an acetate printout hologram or similar. At some stage in the future: All ready for spraying in the morning. Octagon Secure Storage For all your storage needs, find us on Quality Street!
May 2011 Octagon Secure Storage is primed black, along with the road areas on the first of the modular tiles! No photos of that yet, though. Now I'm about to mix up a warm grey colour for the upper surfaces of the modular tiles, mixing in a generous dollop of PVA as it's not acrylic paint and not waterproof. The yoghurt pot will be used to mix and store it as it has an airtight lid and it will be awhile until tiles 5-8 are ready to paint. Basic warm grey mixed, now I need to decant some of it into smaller containers and mix up some variations for sponge-painting the tiles, that way I can get a consistent variation of colour on all of them instead of flat grey. More black, burnt sienna and yellow ochre was added during the mixing to get the right colour. In between short rain showers I've been getting some spraying done. The road on the first tile: Tile plus the OSS building which has already had a grey overcoat: Roads with a light overspray of grey: Additional paint colours mixed: Paint at last! It's going to need another coat possibly with a lighter mix, at that stage I'll add in more colour variation.
May 2011 Octagon Secure Storage is primed black, along with the road areas on the first of the modular tiles! No photos of that yet, though. Now I'm about to mix up a warm grey colour for the upper surfaces of the modular tiles, mixing in a generous dollop of PVA as it's not acrylic paint and not waterproof. The yoghurt pot will be used to mix and store it as it has an airtight lid and it will be awhile until tiles 5-8 are ready to paint. Basic warm grey mixed, now I need to decant some of it into smaller containers and mix up some variations for sponge-painting the tiles, that way I can get a consistent variation of colour on all of them instead of flat grey. More black, burnt sienna and yellow ochre was added during the mixing to get the right colour. In between short rain showers I've been getting some spraying done. The road on the first tile: Tile plus the OSS building which has already had a grey overcoat: Roads with a light overspray of grey: Additional paint colours mixed: Paint at last! It's going to need another coat possibly with a lighter mix, at that stage I'll add in more colour variation.
May 2011 Anyway, zebra crossings. First I tried a card stencil and sponging, the paint was a bit too thin but it'll do. Then on the wider roads I tried a card stencil and a spraycan but couldn't get the stencil to stay flat enough, the edges were totally blurry. Some time later, having cut the stencil out again from a 1mm foamed PVC offcut I tried again, OK but still not amazing: Back to stencil + sponge, having made sure the sponge was really dry: The sprayed OSS building on different tiles: Progress! The fourth tile with sprayed road & crossings, plus PVC stencil: The masking on the miraball seems to have worked, I've reassembled it and everything works. Fourth tile with it's first coat of paint on the paved areas: I've also started on the Octagon Secure Storage Facility. The poster boards are rough black ready for some printed billboards, the main doors and control panel are Boltgun Metal ready for a thick wash/glaze of black paint and chestnut ink tomorrow and I've added quite a lot of weathering/stains with Devlan Mud. The cables still need doing and I'll probably add staining to the contours on the roof to add a bit of depth to it. Plus the 'plinth' around the bottom edge will need some weathering along the bottom. Coming along nicely, though. The fourth tile with a second coat of paint: The entrance to Octagon Secure Storage is mostly done, I still need to add a waterslide transfer to the control panel and at some stage add some stairs on the right.
Deadlines can be a great thing for productivity. The shots from last night: Four completed tiles: One of Richard's Aragotos which have come out really well: Complete table (this is the layout for Legionary on Saturday): The OSS building in it's natural habitat: Plus a couple of shots of the neighbouring table where Clive, our CA player, was trying out a vicious Shasvaasti list with tons of camo markers. And a proxied Sphinx. A proxied Sphinx which rolled up an entire battle line of Aleph troops. Yuck. This layout is for a participation table on Saturday, the 75 point forces are starting at ground level within 6" of the corners. I know from experience that it takes 5-6 orders to get someone from the closest deployment zone onto the first level. Well, I know that it would have taken 5-6 orders if climbing up the open ladder hadn't exposed my Djanbazan Sniper to an optimum-range Akyrlat-Kannone shot, leaving him glued to the ladder and no Engineers anywhere on the table. There will be another 8-10 cars dotted around the table for the demo games, plus the tower is usually placed along the centreline of our layouts with no deployment higher than the first walkway. One of the four tiles hadn't had plywood added underneath yet, this is now in progress: Octagon Secure Storage ready for varnishing, the white overspray is quite delicate/easily marked: Cables painted egg yolk-yellow, some shading added to the too-flat roof and a printout added to the security panel. Antenociti includes them in the pack. I used an old flat brush, about 6mm wide. Dip one corner briefly into the Devlan Mud so that there's only a tiny amount of ink on the brush. Paint the ink along the crease. If need be, wipe any remaining ink off the brush with a tissue. With the brush mostly at right-angles to the surface, stipple the edges of the painted ink to break up the edges and spread it out a bit. The back/grey/white surface is quite 'thirsty' which is what helps make it possible, you might find the same technique won't work on normally-primed buildings. You also need to work quite fast so that the initial line of thin painted ink doesn't dry before you can diffuse it.
I took a few photos during the participation games today but here's some sneak peeks taken last night when we were setting up the table. Eight different 75-ish point force handouts: The table, with the LED Miraball in action: This morning once we'd finished putting up posters: It was a great day after a bit of a slow start, we hopefully gained 4-5 new club members and hooked a good dozen people on Infinity. About half of them mentioned having seen Infinity of Beasts of War, so kudos to BoW again! In my Fiday's first outing (outlined in green) she promptly takes out two of Dom's unguarded Netrods (outlined in red) before eventually getting shot by a Dakini. 'Let this road be henceforward be known as Panzerfaust Alley!' I had a Ghulam with Panzerfaust behind the crates at the bottom and another in the window of the bottom left building. Dom's Asura still managed to make it across the road in (mostly) one piece and that was with my Djanbazan Sniper taking pot-shots as well! The whole table with Panzerfaust Alley on the far side, my Djanbazan Sniper on the Octagon and the Fiday in the middles of the roundabout on the right. Dom's Aleph were mostly up in the far right corner... ... apart from the HMG Garuda who landed in my deployment zone where the smoke template is, behind an Odalisque, Ghulam Doctor and Naffatun. Stupidly, the Odalisque used her 360 visor to Shoot instead of Alert. Oops. One downed Odalisque and Doctor later and only the Naffatun was left in that corner. Last night's table, with some effort placing barricades and shipping containers to stop a repeat of Panzerfaust Alley: My Haqqislam, apparently fielding 280 points and 8 SWC in a 200 point game via some proxied Azra'il. Which of course turned out to be an Azra'il with Spitfire and a bunch of Hafza helpers. Hiding the cost of a couple of Yuan Yuans who both got EXP CCWs! Unfortunately my opponent had three Yoagats spread around, rendering their smoke rather ineffective. One of them did reach CC, only to eventually be cut down a few rounds of combat later. Shortly after that, the Link Team got lightly toasted by an infiltrating CA operative but some stunning armour saves led to a single Hafza casualty. And of course a smear of alien ichor facing them. I then spotted an opportunity for the Djanbazan Sniper (yes, a real one!) to get up onto a roof as part of a new Link Team. However the Djanbazan had his usual luck with Climbing rolls, eventually falling 2" off the wall, knocking himself unconscious and as a result breaking the Link Team as he was the leader at the time. The next turn the Hafzas waited around to see what would happen, watched him fail to regenerate and went back into Azra'il Escort Mode. The Azra'il went on to wipe the floor with the remaining CA. On the other side of the board (we were playing 2v2) REND's Su-Jian was spotted taking cover behind a footbridge before causing havoc amongst the Ariadna forces gathered there, eventually going down to a Dozer's Rifle.
Some photos from Saturday's scenery-making session: What's not visible in the photos above is the flyover, I've done a bit more on that this evening. The buttresses still need a strip of 1mm PVC on top to cover the edges, the roadway needs some low walls, it needs a few access ladders and the whole lot needs textured glue plus sand, but I'm quite pleased with it. More for 40k than Infinity, though, due to the nasty sniper-platform that it would make... Some more progress. The 'under' strips have been added to make a solid foundation for the side-walls: The side-walls will look something like this but with more overlap along the bottom: Buttress covering strips added:
Late 2011-Early 2012 Six months and no scenery construction. I finally found some time to sit down and clip out all the pieces in a big Platformer box and work out how I want them to go together: These are mostly connecting pieces, bridges, ramps onto roofs etc. rather than standalone terrain pieces. The watchtower might end up with a roof and is only likely to end up on the table once we're using two-storey buildings, with a base for extra stability. It is one ramp-height higher than our existing white buildings. They still need cleaning up and gluing together. I'm not sure how many of you remember the LED display ball but I'm now planning a building structure for it to sit inside - the daylight coming from above at the last wargames convention was enough to throw off the synchronisation and it wouldn't work when the sun was out! The current plan is to have the ball's base standing at table height with three towers equidistant around it supporting some kind of wide roof, possibly conical. The roof is the bit I'm least sure about at the moment. There will also be a circular walkway about 3" up in the air, just below the 'ball' and the same height as the white building roofs. This will have a handrail around the outer edge, similar to Pringles Tower, possibly with some gaps so that bridges to roofs can be placed there. Some of the three support towers will have doors for elevators in them and all will have doors where the catwalks meet the towers. While plans for the display centre percolate, I'm starting to glue together the Platformer stuff, experimenting with replacing the bottom panel in each 'block' with 1mm foamed PVC so that I have more of the detailed panels. The pins on the underside had to be sanded down slightly so that the side pieces were gripped tightly enough but it seems to be working OK. Plus two of the narrow ramps glued together side-by-side, this may still need a layer of 1mm material glued underneath as the contact point between the two ramps is quite small. Note the small ridges just far enough apart to hold a 25mm base in place. The first test piece with PVC underneath, now with the side rails glued on. I t was relatively stiff with the side rails but to be doubly-sure I added some strengthening ribs of 2mm PVC on the underside so that it can definitely be used unsupported: There's also a short support if need be, the bridge just sits inside it: The first of the ramps now has the extra reinforcing layer underneath and the next one has been started: Now the 'bulk' test for the display building, no roof at this point. The roof is likely to be the height of the black tin, with the triangular tin sticking up through it. The spray can is just a stand-in. Walkway joining up with ramps/bridges etc:
As it's now a week to PAW2012 and I've now got confirmation of access to mains power, time to get the display ball building done! I cut a base out of thick card and glued down the towers a few days ago. The card isn't thick enough by itself but by the time the ring walkway and some form of roof are glued on it should all make a decently rigid structure. The next step was to cut out the walkways, as with Pringles Tower these are from 5mm foamboard with a sheet of hexagonal mesh material glued onto the top surface. For the doorways where the walkways meet the towers I went for a very quick solution and scored a doorway into a piece of 1mm foamed PVC. First walkway glued in place with with some ledges glued onto the towers underneath for extra strength. Plus a doorway at each end with control panels from Antenociti. The outer edge of the walkway will have a wall most of the way round with a gap for stairs, ramps, bridges etc. as per the earlier photos. Deadlines are wonderful things for productivity... As I 'need' the new building for the demo table at the games convention this weekend there was a certain degree of urgency. Full construction WIP photos were taken but that'll have to wait. A test fit of the 'roof' plus Jigabachi on top and working LED displayball underneath: All but the roof undercoated black then oversprayed grey and a bit of white, the roof construction nearly finished: A bit more detailing on the roof - steps up to the elevator door, a round circle for the helipad and a hatch in the foreground which matches up with the column on top of the JD tin: The security camera: From memory, it's the targeter from either a Land Raider or Predator sponson for the camera, the bit that hangs under a Land Speeder for the main bracket, some plasticard rod and some of Zinge Industries' flexible wrapped wire. REND recently found some LED glow-stick torches in a local pound shop and on my request picked up a bunch for me. Here's the disassembled torch and the result, with a nod to Athandros for inspiration:
March 2012 A bunch of semi-random photos in the run up to the tournament a week tomorrow. A snow table using a mix of grey boxes, iKubes, the Octagon Storage Depot and some laser-cut pods from Warmill and Sarissa: Our modular urban table with the addition of two MAS buildings and the helipad from the demo table, this gets enough stuff on the table that most of the buildings are multi-storey: The garden table, still too light on LoF-blocking terrain but the Warmill security fencing is looking good on the corners: Finally, I've spent the last few days gluing sheet foam onto Space Crusade tiles to make the internal walls useable for LoF. This shows four tiles 2x2, each table will be nine tiles 3x3. 72 doors per table... Ten tiles down, eight to go. A little sneak peek at my next project once the tournament is past:
August 2012 Five months without an update. Last night I finally did some scenery, taking a toy monster truck dump-truck and weathering it up. After varnish and a light overspray of grey & white: Finished item: More photos on the blog but I'll add them to this thread later on. http://wargamingtrader.com/miniature-monday-monster-truck-edition Plus a couple of photos that I forgot to add to the blog post: In-game shots: Just arrived in the post - a box of clear dice cubes suitable for on-street ad towers. I grabbed a bunch of posters from Tommygun's & Panzerkunst's work and knocked up some adshell graphics to go in the dice cubes, very effective! These will be available as a PDF download at some stage. Anyway, here's a sneak peek for some box-nets with some more design work: In the long run I want to do 'real life' versions as well - covered with graffiti, odd trainers and wet newspapers dumped on the top etc. There might also be some using actual Infinity artwork but that has to wait until everyone's recovered from Gencon...
First PDF version now available, including instructions: http://wargamingtrader.com/infinity/adshells-pdf-1 Preview: Another item that's been sitting around for ages waiting to be used are these large LEGO ducted fans: They were originally bought for a ducted fan flyer but turned out to be much larger than expected, so they've now been pressed into service as scenery. My usual black undercoat/grey overspray/white overspray was applied then some black streaking on the trailing edges and silver streaking on the leading edges to give some feeling of movement. The inside of the inner duct might need painting black, and ideally they need some kind of hazard stripes on the outside, but they'll add some much-needed lower terrain to our tables - we've got a lot stuff that's high enough to hide behind but not much stuff that's low enough to provide cover and see over... A bunch of the dice cube adshells in action in last night's Prisoner 09 mission against Domo: They were surprisingly good at blocking LoF when combined with the trees in the middle, as we both found out the hard way at different points of the game... Bloggage on the use of the adshells in the game: http://wargamingtrader.com/dice-cube-adshells-action Here's the bit that's not been included in this thread yet, LoF diagrams so that you can see how much they block firing:
With the old forum getting closed down immanently, I now have about thirty browser tabs open... Some sneak peeks of the next bit of terrain - a monorail based on some old Kenner AT-AT legs: JUMP! More details to come...
A couple more photos showing the cross-section of the rail and a short piece of rail supported by thick wire: Courtesy of Steve at Clifton Road Games, some more potential scenery: This was a display stand for pairs of glasses but could make a pretty impressive double-tower apartment block. It's all laser-cut perspex that slots loosely together, so it's strong but quite heavy. The balcony areas will need handrails of some kind, possibly attached via magnets so that it can still be packed flat. Plus some detailing/windows/doors would need to be added but that could be as simple as rectangles of foamed PVC or plasticard. Pros No basic structural work needed, it's pretty much there already. Takes apart easily for transport (but would need a dedicated storage box). Great set-piece for convention tables. Cons SNIPER HEAVEN! Takes up a big chunk of the table, this is going to dominate the battlefield. The 'balconies' narrow as they go toward the back, you can only fit the full width of a 25mm base halfway back. See the Spektr Sniper in the last photo, any further back and the base sticks out, getting in the way of any potential handrail/wall. I was going to add detail to the first monorail support by adding access rungs and decided to head off in the other direction: Threading the wire through was a bit tricky...
From the replies: The sunglasses stand reminds me of the vertical necromunda tower that crops up every now and then in terrain threads, this one : It's not so much a snipers nest when your enemies are above and below you. I'm looking forwards to seeing where you take it.
Painting progress on the monorail supports: Quite a bit of weathering still to do on all the grey areas. Game-wise I'm thinking of treating the barbed wire a bit like Electric Pulse: Anyone trying to climb past the barbed wire suffers a -6PH penalty with a roll that falls within the -6 immobilising the model for two player turns. A 'full' failure result in a fall as normal. Climbing Plus models will also have to roll with the-6 modifier, but a 'full' failure just means that they don't manage to get past the wire rather than falling off. EDIT - or have the immobilisation last until the model makes a successful PH-6 roll to get free, so you can burn orders to try and get loose but if you don't have Climbing Plus you're probably going to get free by falling off! I was over at the new Ninth Legion club yesterday and set up a table using the apartment building and the monorail for a simplified version of the Prisoner 09 mission using teams of 150pt lists - there was no airlock or specialist and four doors on the isolation room. Winner would be the first team to get the prisoner off any table edge - something which proved to be a bit tricky as the Ariadna/Haqqislam alliance decided to glue the prisoner to the side of a container with an ADHL rather than risk losing! Larger photos at http://wargamingtrader.com/monorail-part-2 along with a roundup of recent progress. Some more work on the twin apartment tower. Some views of the 1mm foamed PVC walls, although I've increased the height slightly since doing these test ones: Starting the 'proper' batch, three sheets of foamed PVC cut to the relevant width: A bunch of balcony corners marked by scribing them with the tips of a dial caliper: Finally, back with the monorail, a short bit of brass tube glued into the underside of one of the monorail pieces, both for general sturdiness but also for a freestanding end of rail to reach th edge of the board:
