Over the last 8 months I have been working on a table which for various reasons have never seen play in its uncompleted form. It's almost complete now (always some things left to do :) ) and it finally saw play for the first time as part of small 6 man tournament where it was favorably received. I have some images from process and though it might be interesting to see how the concept of the board has evolved over time, both in the actual form of the board how my image of how the board should look. I started out with an objective room and some scatter terrain. Micro Arts Studio had a sale so it's all from there. At this time I didn't have any real vision or idea for how the board should look and as such started to paint the things in the normal myriad of colors that are common for infinity. Green for the objective room just because I happen to like green. Before my next purchase I did start to form an idea for what I wanted for my table. I wanted it to be a military base, not the Ariadna base in the middle of the jungle but more what you would consider a modern military base with barracks and guard turrets and chain link fence and stuff. I have looked at a lot of images of Infinity tables and this is one theme that I feel is generally missing. It's all civilian areas or jungles and sure this is supposed to be spec-ops and not regular army I do feel that having spec-ops infiltrating a military base and perhaps coming up against competing group that is after the same thing in the base would be a very plausible scenario. So my next addition was a landing pad, I felt that was something that could fit well in a military base. I looked at a lot of them but settled for a large one from TTCombat. While the image of how the final table should look like where still forming in my head I decided to go for a more utilitarian look for the landing pad and painted mostly gray. Not 100% happy with the center part and I might end up redoing that in the future, but it will do for now. The base color is Vallejo German Panzer Grey which they happen to have available as a polyurethane primer in large bottles which is great because this became the base for all my terrain after this. At this point I was close to settling the image in my head of how the table should look. The other thing that is overly common in infinity boards in the bright mixed colors and to me that doesn't feel cyberpunk. It's not that I don't like bright colors, just look at my pink JSA but when I think of cyberpunk I think of a very dark world where the only colors comes from graffiti and neon lights. My introduction to cyberpunk was in the form of the Swedish PnP RPG Mutant, specifically the 1989 version which took inspiration from Gibsons Sprawl trilogy but also Blade Runner and Judge Dread and the bleak world it presented very much shaped my view of how a cyberpunk world should look. With that in mind I continued to add more buildings, the next one being a Warsnal barracks, I also got their Spetsnaz Tower but decided that it just didn't fit with my image for the table. Another idea I had was a motor pool area with a bunch of parked tanks and other vehicles. I have abandon this idea for now but I might come back to it in the future. I did get some 1/48 scale tanks and vehicles and I do feel they fit well with the board and story the board will tell as we will see later. The selection of modern 1/48 scale military vehicles are very limited btw, these are all from Tamiya except the small bots on the side which are part of a kit series called Fist of War which depicts a potential continuation of WW2 where Germany started to make mechs. There are several very interesting kits in that series but sadly they are in 1/72 scale making most of them too small to fit with infinity. More Micro Arts buildings, in the background we also see the mat I settled for. I want to try incorporate the roads in a good why when I build the table and I feel the modular board will help me do that. First time laying out what I have on a correct sized table, before this I didn't have any surface large enough. Some new additions as well here, the white H shaped building is a Zen Terrain Medical Bay as is the walls. The chain link fence deserves an extra mention. I knew I wanted chain link fence, it was a big part of my original vision for the table but finding good looking and practical fences turned out to be more difficult than I originally envisioned. I finally settled for these very reasonably priced fences from Ziterdes and I'm very happy with that choice. I think they fit very well with the table I'm trying to build. The problem now is to decide how to play them in practice, should they be LoF blocking or not? Another interesting part is the helicopter on the landing pad and the big mech on the left. One of the other players in our group often incorporates Gunpla model kits in his tables and while I have plenty of Gunpla myself I don't think those mechs would fit with my image of it but they did inspire me to try other things. I happened to have two Ghost in the Shell kits laying around, the helicopter is a 1/72 scale Jigabashi, a bit small to be an actual helicopter but works fine as a large drone. The big mech on the left is a 1/35 scale HAW 206 made famous by being the focus of the intro and second episode of Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex. The Medical Bay is getting some paint on it and on the left are two more structures from Zen Terrain. One of the things from my original vision for the board where guard towers. I searched high and low for ones that would fit my table, you would think something like that should be easy to find but all designs are just strange looking like the Spetsnaz tower I discarded earlier. These are the ones I finally settled on and while they don't perfectly fit my image they are good enough. Putting some paint on lots of things, the green objective room finally got a new coat to fit with the rest and I'm very happy with how the walls of the left turned out. The shading on both the medical bay and the guard towers where a failure that I ended up redoing later. The pipe piles in the bottom right is made out of the innards of cash receipt rolls. One thing that I felt was missing was a large LoF blocking building with more than 1 floor. The warsenal barracks from earlier was the highest building and if I put that in a deployment zone anything on its roof could easily dominate the entire board. So I decided to make one final large purchase in the form of Micro Arts Studios Precinct Sigma pack. Yes I know many people didn't like it but that was due to the paint job they included in their promotional pictures. The shape is good and it's very customizable allowing you to reshape it depending on your needs. It's starting to come together but the scatter terrain just feels out of place, it's too brightly colored in comparison to the rest of the board. One thing I really do like is how the clear acrylic parts on the objective room contrasts with the rest. I feel that with the usual bright paint job clear acrylic parts like these don't pop in the way they should. I tried muting the colors of the scatter terrain but nothing I did felt right so in the end I decided to just repaint most of them from scratch. I got some inspiration and decided to add working search lights to the guard towers. Took a while to find something that would fit my needs and not cost more then the rest of the table combined (there are some really good looking search light for model railways but their cost just wasn't worth it, these where really cheap from china). They are powered by 2 AA batteries inside the tower. I have 3 more and plan on placing at least 2 of them on the Precinct Sigma side towers as well. The table in its final form as played in the tournament. The whole look and feel of the table has really come together. The story of the table is that the white mech is attacking the base and the tanks are defending against it. The player spec-ops groups are both using the confusion caused by the attack to infiltrate the base and end up clashing against each other. There are of course still things to do. For example the tanks are only primed, mostly because I haven't decided how to paint them yet. There is also another thing I would like to incorporate into the board in some way, it doesn't really fit the theme of the board but it's just too cool not to :)
They're about ideal for standard S3 remotes, and almost big enough to use as S4 combat or baggage REMs.
Eeeeeyup! Mi-26 is a monster. Here is one picking up an MH-47 Chinook(!) And a humvee will (just barely) fit inside that Chinook:
Well, if a door on your model is twice the size of a mini, it's either TAG-sized or some cargo door. Haven't you seen the opening of the 2004 Appleseed movie? Also, 1/48 aircraft models work pretty well on the Infinity table. I have a V22 Osprey and a Mi24 HIND-D for an airport table.
And the pilot also rides wearing TAG suit? *wink* With last resizing, Infinity is pretty much near 1/50 (34 mm is 1.70 m in that scale), so 1/48 is going to look OK. See the Airfix UK quad conversions. 1/24 is not going to look OK, and 1/35 probably will look weird as soon as "what is seen ca not be unseen".
Apparently you haven't seen the 2004 Appleseed movie, where the Landmates are jumping out through the side doors of the Tiltrotor.
Probably... anyway, it was about seats and all things. Fixing or explaining one size issue, while the rest stand is no fix.
Buildings at 1/50 scale, vehicles at 1/48 scale. Works well, but who knows what scale the mdf stuff is. I'm not convinced that many of the mdf terrain manufacturers use a consistent scale. No matter, it's a bit off topic, n'est-ce pas? The table looks nice, albeit a bit bleak. Perhaps find a way to add a spot or two of color? Vending machines, posters, signage -- warning signs in particular-- and other details with some color to them. The Terra cotta statue would look fine if you put it on a plinth. A plinth designed so that it 'ties' the statue to the table. Look at the base upon which sits the Statue of Liberty. Something like that, but more in the style of Far East Asian architecture.
Bleak is what I am going for so that's a positive. Neither Vending machines nor posters really fit the military base theme imho but warning signs could definitively be a thing, as I said in the op I do like how the acrylic parts of the objective room contrasts with the rest. Just need to find stuff that fits the theme (so no advertisement stuff which is most of what is available). I am working on a type of plinth, it needs a base anyway as it's too top heavy as is. Doesn't need much force to tip over and when it does there will be lots of broken terrain and miniatures as it weights over 2kg.
Vending machines in military bases? Spoiler: Clonk! Also military likes dark red primer, olive, tan and khaki colors... repainting is not high priority after redeployment or construction. And nobody will paint supplies. The issue IMO is you went from cheerful colors to mostly greys; something in between is possible. Even if you go cyberpunkish and use very muted colors, some variation will help. Posters in bases exist: base maps, notifications & reminders, propaganda...
I'm sure there are vending machines on a military base but they don't fit with what I am going for. If I had more buildings which you could enter (currently it's just the objective room) they could fit there. I tried to do something in between color wise for containers, but it didn't fit very well. I think consistency is very important for the look and feel of the table. In one of those table image dump threads from some tournament which can't find atm there where a table which was a city with tanks on then streets and stuff and everything was white or very light shades of gray. It was a very striking table which was a big inspiration. Not saying no to a color accent but if I do one it has to be consistent over the whole table, not one color here and another there. This is something I could consider for example: https://ttcombat.com/collections/sci-fi-utopia/products/streetlight-set Not 100% sold on the design but the concept of having the neon lights as an accent is something I am looking at but it needs fit the theme so this for example is not something I would consider: https://ttcombat.com/collections/sci-fi-utopia/products/neon-signs
Some updates. I haven't done to much more with the table since the summer as I have been mostly focusing on terrain for Bushido (another skirmish miniature wargame). But I have done some stuff, mostly different objective markers (got the big micro art studio ITS set) and some flags (from customeeple). Brought the table to 14 participant tournament this weekend and while my results in the tournament it self is best left ignored I did end up winning the price for best table!!! Here are some pictures from the setup, these are taken after the last game so some are parts can be a bit displaced. Missions where Supremacy, Show of Force and Supplies. The trophy: Got many positive comments about the lights and the big Precinct Sigma building while the only negative comments where about the modular mat which some thought made range guessing too easy (each mat section is 12"x12"). Not sure how I feel about that, while I definitely get their argument there is also the fact building the table around the roads greatly enhances the look and feel and while there are mats with fixed roads the fact that they are fixed limits you a lot of you try to build around them.
I personally wouldn't worry about the modular map enhancing range guessing. How many times are the miniatures going to be perfectly lined up along the orthogonal lines? Most of the time they will be offset a little, it might make it so a player can easily guess within a few inches, but most really good players can do that already. All the uniform mat tiles do is give the amateur a little bit of help at guessing, and they probably need the help.
Really like the trophy! I'd add a few more colors to the buildings, honestly. At the very least, military bases end up with a variety of different age buildings, which are weathered differently. For extra fun, you could have an area freshly-repainted with a paint bucket right next to it, no trooper around. To further mess with people, you put a bullet hole in the paint bucket and have it knocked over and spilled.
