How’s this for a trench table?

Madscuzzy over at the B&C has built one he built in six large pieces so he has some modularity.  He used a lot of sets of Forgeworld trench inserts similar to what Jason Dyer did a few years back for Astronomi-con.  His table is all done and he’s gaming on it.

When I get mine done it will be more modular, but unfortunately I’m doing all my trench lining by hand and I’ve done a lot more texturing of the battlefield.  I’ve gone for a more authentic WW1 look, rather than a pure Sci-fi look of Madscuzzy’s board.  Lets see if I can get some pictures of Dyer Straights and his board onto my blog.

The first two images are from the Bolter & Chainsword thread and are copyright Madscuzzy who has an overly fancy website where the 40K section doesn’t work quite right…

Below is a picture of Jason Dyer’s table and the Egyptian table formerly at Checkpoint Charlie’s in North Vancouver and now in the Astronomi-con terrain collection.

Jason Dyer's Trench Table

I played on it and that was another of my Astronomi-con armies that finished tied for second or third in appearance.  Yes once again I’m playing James Russo’s tyranids for the hawk-eyed among you.

Gaming terrain formerly at Checkpoint Charlie's

Additional Trench Tables

Today someone posted pictures of this trench table done up for the game Warzone by a fella in Switzerland, at least I’m assuming it is a guy. Here is a picture from his photobucket account. I don’t understand why people still use photobucket when Flickr is so very superior…

• Sydney Roundwood’s Trench Table Blog Posts
• Corbania Prime even made instructional videos, but he didn’t set the trenches into the table…
• A rather well done Trench making tutorial
• Another above ground trench example from another forum
• Heavy Googling found this WIP trench table
• Here is another great modular WW1 trench table from Lead Adventures Forum

One Down, Twenty-three to go

So it took a while, and the last wash is still drying, but the first tile in my modular trench table is finished.  Now I only have to make 23 more.  Even at one a week that is 23 weeks and that doesn’t even count all the time I spent already, especially doing research.  I scoured the internet for bits and tutorials. I bought books, I’m going to see a few movies, but basically I got it right, not historically perfect, but good enough.

Things to improve, more grit.  I will put beach sand over most of the tile next time.  Cat liter can bunch up and not let scatter terrain sit on it very well, but beach sand, nothing I make is going to be so delicate that it can’t sit on top of beach sand.  I’ll still have the really fine sand for some spots, but their won’t be bare foam showing like on this tile.  I drybrushed it, but the grittier stuff takes the drybrush better.  I could do a heavier drybrush but I’m trying to get better at drybrushing not worse.

I wish I would have put another piece of battlefield debris by the crater I carved into the tile.  That didn’t come out as nice as the ‘bought’ craters, but it may be cover-able with scatter terrain, if not on this tile then on some other.  The other option is to put a lot more grit, maybe even some foam or cork.  I bought some scrap cork the other day, as part of my two dollar expenditure at the strange craft store on Main Street.

The next time won’t be done for a while.  I need to finish off my army for this years Astronomi-con Vancouver.  I think I need to paint five more guys, a couple rank and file and my HQ.  I put enough effort into this tile, hopefully I get better.  I plan to thin the Terra Cotta paint next time, this time I just put it on pretty much out it came out of the container.

One last thing I tried out was some pigments I got off of AwesomePaintJob.com, this was a bit of an impulse buy, as I already had some pigments, but I was big into trying out new techniques, and one I’ve never used much is pigments.  I also mixed into my rust mixtures, Rust Brown Ink, water and later, the Foundation Orange.  I’ve tried out a lot of new, small, one person hobby companies, after reading about them on Table Top Gaming News or elsewhere.