For dual-purpose Infinity and Cities of Death I'd like to do a new set of boards with roads on but this will involve buying materials. A set of six 24" square boards would give us a full 6x4 table with quite a bit of variety in road layouts.

Materials would either be 25mm blue foam plus 5mm foam board for the raised non-road sections (very light version but possibly not robust enough) or 5mm ply for the tiles with foam board for the raised areas. Another advantage of blue foam would be the ability to dig into it for shell holes etc.

Ian

I know robs looking at getting and building some cities of death / necromunda esque terrain sorted. over to you rob...

I just checked with the Uni, and I should be able to get 60x40" sheets of 5mm foamboard for about £10. I should be going down next Tuesday, but will have to quarter the sheets to bring back on the train.

Ian

Basic layout for 24" road boards:

A 5" road doesn't quite give enough room for two Rhinos to pass without going up on the pavements but is plenty wide enough for a Land Raider straddling both lanes. Add on 1.5" of pavement each side and a Baneblade can get down the road but watch out pedestrians!

The road surface would be the underlying tile plus sand for textures, the pavement and corner areas would be foamboard to raise them up plus sandtex or similar painted over the foamboard to make it stronger and give it a little texture. Painting-wise the pavements would be a slightly lighter grey than the corner areas but not by much.

5" roads plus 1.5" pavements give us an 8" block in the corner for buildings, meaning that we can make 8x8", 16x8", 16x16" buildings etc. and have them all fit in different places.

Here's a few possible tile layouts and how they could combine together:

You're getting the 5mm foamboard from the uni right? Is this a special one-off or can anyone do this?

Looking good mate! What are you envisaging making the buildings out of? I can supply a near limitless amount of corrugated cardboard (Dell boxes from work) if that could be used for anything?

Luke - it's the University of Plymouth, I used to work in the art & design faculty. No idea if Exeter Uni or College have similar stuff available.

Dom - I suspect we'll end up with a mix of GW CoD bits and foamboard, but corrugated cardboard can be surprisingly good for quick-n-dirty stuff. Does any of it show the corrugations on one side?

I have a few ideas for making standard-height floors so that buildings can be linked together easily, partly inspired by things like this.

Ian

Cost-wise, eight 2x2' tiles in blue foam would be £37 delivered (from Antenociti's Workshop) and would let us do either two 4x4' tables, a 6x4' plus two spare tiles for variety or an 8x4'.

Foamboard for the raised areas for eight tiles should be covered by a couple of 60x40" sheets at £10 each, with offcuts going towards buildings, plus another couple of full sheets for buildings.

So around £80 plus glue, paint and sand.

Ian

It doesn't at the moment, but if someone gets bored enough, they could always sit and split the layers one evening :P

I don't know if this is doable but would you be able to get an extra half sheet that I could have and pay for?

Should be, we can discuss it tonight. It also depends how much foamboard I can manage on the train back from Plymouth!

Ian

Having spoken to Richard and Clive I'll be ordering the blue foam in the morning, after checking that it will arrive by Tuesday.

Now we need to start making a list of what everyone needs to bring on Tuesday.

I will bring:
Blue foam tiles x 8
Foamboard x lots
PVA glue
Cutting mats, scalpels and steel rulers.
Airbrush, but I have no propellant cans.

We will also need:
Sand x quite a lot for texturing (no beach sand unless it's been rinsed thoroughly!).
Superglue
Poly cement
Paintbrushes in lots of different sizes.
Paper towels
Dust sheets to make sure we don't mess up the floor, and also to catch sand.
Some kind of textured paint for painting the foam board, preferably grey.
Spray undercoat?
Maybe some hair dryers to dry off PVA/sand and paint.
Filler/polyfilla
Assorted paint, if the boards/buildings get dry enough.
Assorted bits box stuff for detailing buildings/terrain.

Bear in mind that we need to build some Warhammer terrain as well as 40k, as we're really short of fantasy stuff.

Ian

Looking into building materials a bit further, I may buy a bit less foamboard and instead go for some foamed PVC in the long run, it's much more rigid and tough without being much harder to work. The big Infinity demo table at Salute was built with foamed PVC.

Terrain ideas/themes:

Warhammer - there are several buildings to be painted and a big piece of card with trees stuck on, if the trees are cut out of the card they should stand up OK, we then need to make some amorphous blobs with some texture/flock that can be used to show the edges of the terrain.

40k Ruins - the usual gothic ruins, we have quite a few CoD pieces from the last scenery session, plus a bunch of made sections of scenery that need painting.

40k/Infinity Urban - buildings that are less ruined and less gothic. I have a few ideas for templating these.

40k/Infinity Industrial - storage tanks, factories, warehouses etc.

Ian

I got a parcel in the post this morning. :-) Antenociti's is definitely good for turnaround, I only ordered on Sunday.

Anyway, inside is some 3mm and 2mm foamed PVC, this stuff makes foamboard look like crap. It is harder to cut but is vastly tougher and doesn't show a foam texture in the middle. As a result, I'd like to use this for the bulk of the buildings but still use foamboard for the raised areas of the board as it will be easier to cut curved corners for the pavements.

I've found an online stockist that sells 96x48" sheets for a reasonable price, but getting a sheet of 3mm and a sheet of 2mm is going to cost more than the two sheets of foamboard that I was planning on for buildings as it's slightly more expensive per square foot and the sheets are larger.

https://www.plasticstockist.com/Hygienic-Cladding-Sheet/White+Matt+Palight+Foamed+Pvc+Sheet.aspx (ex VAT & postage)

So we're looking at:
£40 for eight blue foam tiles.
£20 for two 60x40" foamboard sheets.
£60 delivered for one 96x48" 3mm and one 96x48" 2mm sheet of foamed PVC.

So £120 plus glue/paint/sand etc. but much tougher material for the buildings and an extra 30 square feet of it.

Ian

Hmm. Getting a bit worried about paint costs, a 5 litre pot of Sandtex is enough to do the eight tiles and some of the buildings but costs £25. On the other hand a thin wash and a minor bit of drybrushing and it should be done.

Ian

I've had confirmation on the delivery price for the foamed PVC sheets. Ordering three sheets appears to have the same £15 + VAT delivery charge as ordering two sheets - if anyone wants to split a sheet let me know this afternoon, that will drive the cost of the sheets down a bit further...

Prices and details:
http://exeter-inquisition.org/post/1412

Ian

Some more tile layout sketches:

Most of the tiles have spaces in the middle where LoS-blocking buildings or terrain can be placed, to reduce fire corridors that cross the entire table.

ian

Blue foam tiles and some foam glue have been ordered, I've confirmed with my contacts at the Uni that they have plenty of foamboard and that I can pick it up on Tuesday (and cut some of it down to size on their massive cutting mat) and I'll be ordering the foamed PVC this evening.

Looking good. :-)

Ian

The blue foam tiles have already arrived - not much packaging but they seem to be fine.

Also, this is quite inspiring as a scenery idea. Apparently it's an outdoor theatre set.

Ian

The sheets of foamed PVC have shipped, they're claiming delivery tomorrow but I assume it'll be Monday.

I've bought PVA, several sizes of superglue (superglue seems to be the best glue for the foamed PVC), a couple of dustsheets, a small squeezy tube of Polyfilla, some wide masking tape and some wide double-sided tape this morning. Tomorrow I'll be buying textured paint (I checked the cupboard under the stairs but I don't have any left) some large paintbrushes and some sponges.

We still need to sort out who's bringing in sand, assorted acrylic paints, bits, paper towels and some spray primer.

Can you let me know what you're all bringing?

Ian

I'll bring the can of desert yellow army painter spray along.

Good. Here's the blue foam:

There are a few dents on the outer sheets, but they can end up on the underneath.

Ian

Assorted glue & stuff:

Ian

Impressive preparation Ian.

Are you sure about doing this on a club night? I'm booked up to play a fantasy game against Tim this week and although I want to improve the clubs scenery I also want to play.

I will bring in the bits I have with me including the snap fit stuff I mentioned Ian.

Given that it was organised more than three weeks ago, yes. ;-)

Between the Apoc game at the start of the month and the upcoming tournament I don't have any time left on weekends at the moment.

Ian

I've been working on a template for foamed PVC buildings, so that we can both stack them together for multi-floor buildings and also fit them inside each other for more compactness when packing up. Each floor is 3"/75mm high:

Cutting accurate sizes shouldn't be too bad as I've managed to get my Minicraft saw bench running again:

Ian

Now with lips under the roofs to make them sit in place, and a model on 25mm base for scale.

Two-floor version with a balcony wide enough for 60mm bases:

Ian

Looks very impressive.

I've been redoing the plastic bits of scenery with sand and static grass. They look a fair bit better, I will see if I can take some decent photos to post up for comparison. They still aren't great bit of scenery though.

The little forests do look a lot better for it.

Some texture & grass can make a huge difference to the basic bits, thanks.

The template concept is coming along quite well. We will need to add some little squares to the underside of the roofs anyway, if we add a few extra 'locators' to the 200mm roofs then they would fit on the medium-size floors with an overhang:

Here are the eight tiles laid out:

There are some small dents in a few of the corners but these will be invisible with the foamboard on top:

We might want to think about using some of the 1mm foamed PVC to cover all the tile edges, though.

Ian

Instead of Sandtex I picked up a tub of B&Q rough textured paint which was appears to be somewhere between Sandtex and Polyfilla, should be really good for texturing the tiles. The downside is that it only comes in white, so that adds another layer of painting to the process.

I also managed to find some more LED lights for the shed while buying another dozen toy cars for myself...

Ian

P.S. The main thing still outstanding is sand and paint, does anyone have some sand?