Making a terrain board

After the recent heavy defeat of my skaven, I realised that I need a bigger board to play on. My current 3’x3’ board is fine for skirmishes or up to about 500 points a side, but anything much bigger than that and it’s really too small. Hence my new project to make myself a 6’x4’ table.

Like battling on a pocket handkerchief

 

My requirements are that it be relatively quick to make, looks good, and can be stored easily. I prefer using scatter terrain over having terrain moulded into the board – the latter option looks great but I would get bored playing on the same terrain over and over. Even if the table is modular, you’re always going to have that hill somewhere on the board.

Which is good, because a plan surface is a lot quicker and easier to make! I’m going to make three 2’x4’ boards, which will make it easy to store and give me a 4’x4’ option for smaller games. Having done some research, I’ve decided to texture the boards using polyfilla, following this tutorial from Mel Bose (aka the Terrain Tutor). I’ll get a 6’ folding table to sit them on for games.

A trip to the local hardware shop on the weekend yielded two 2’x4’x12mm mdf boards. I’d have got a third, but the other boards all had a bit more bowing to them than I was happy with and I was worried they wouldn’t all sit flush. Not too worried, as I was planning on doing one as a test so I can pick up another board soon.

Let's get cracking...

 

The process for texturing the board is pretty simple. Add water to the top of a container of polyfilla and mix lightly. Brush the water on to the board. Brush again, using a thicker paste. Stipple the board with polyfilla. Allow to dry. Stipple again. This should lead to a nice organic texture that is till flat enough to stand figures on. Naturally, the tutorial has much more detail on how to do this.

Here’s where I got to with the texture. Not quite the coverage of the board in the tutorial – Mel doesn’t have any mdf showing, but I’m still happy with it.

Nearly forgot to take a photo before I painted it!

 Painting was straightforward – dark brown paint from the hardware shop as a base coat, drybrushed with a progressively lighter mix of the base and a light brown, up to straight light brown. The drybrushing was a bit heavy in places but I figured a lot of it would be covered in flock so I didn’t have to be too neat. Again, I’ll be a bit more careful on the next boards.

Basecoat...

...drybrushed...

 To flock it I painted about a quarter at a time with slightly diluted PVA glue, then sprinkled with flock. I added some colour variation with a darker flock, which for the next boards I’ll concentrate on blending in a bit better.

...and done!

I’m pretty happy with the finished product! It just needs a spray with matt varnish to fix the flock and I’ll paint the back at some point to seal it (should have done that up front but I was too impatient to start texturing!). Total time spent wouldn't have been much more than an hour excluding drying time.

Hopefully I’ll get the other two boards done in the next couple of weeks…

Battle report - Wood elves v skaven

Kelathorn Swiftsure surveyed the devastation. A few bodies still twitched, but the wardancers were putting them out of their misery. The survivors who had managed to flee the massacre were being hunted down – none would live to see the morning. Kelathorn wiped his blade on the grass and returned it to its sheath. This incursion had been stopped. But there would be another. And another…

My mate, Richard, and I just played a short game of third ed. 700 points each, wood elves vs skaven. It was his first game in about 25 years, and only my third or fourth since the old days so this was really about getting to grips with the rules and giving a run to some of the miniatures I’ve painted up in the last year or so.

Battle lines are drawn...

 I kept the set up pretty simple, as I didn’t want to spend the whole game getting over obstacles or manoeuvring around buildings. And the board is only 3’x3’, and it gets cluttered pretty quick. Richard got the pick of the table ends and opted for the hill. We set up in movement order – slowest first – as per the rules..

For the skaven, going left to right there are stormvermin with the army general, gutter runners, two rat ogres and a beastmaster, a warpfire thrower team, a block of slaves, a poisoned wind globadier and a block of clanrats. Competent generals will spot my first mistake right there!

The elves lined up with two units of archers (25 in total), wardancers, cavalry (and general) and a small unit of falconers.

'Bipedal man-sized rats, sah! Coming right for us!

Wood elves as far as the eye can see...

My thinking with the deployment was to put the stormvermin behind the cover of the woods and march them up the flank, supported by the rat ogres, and send the clanrats into the storm of arrows in the hope that they could soak up the damage and make it to close combat.

The wood elves took the first turn and my plan promptly came unstuck! Both archer units opened up on the clanrats, as I expected, they took a bunch of casualties, failed their rout test and promptly disappeared off the board. This is when I realised that putting your general on one flank means that the ability to use his leadership for rout tests is severely limited. Not that it would have mattered – I rolled an 8 on the rout test, general’s Ld is 7 – but still. Lesson learned!

If we hide behind this tree, maybe they won't see us...

 

Now, I didn’t take a load of pictures as I thought the game would last longer than it did and I’d have plenty of opportunity! So you’ll just have to imagine my remaining units steadily advancing in my turn, with the rat ogres executing a left turn to try to get around the flank of the cavalry that had advanced towards the stormvermin.

Then imagine the wood elves’ second turn, when the falconers managed to pick off the beastmaster, sending the rat gores back into their wild state and heading for the table edge. The slaves got hammered but the plucky little bastards passed their rout test! The wood elf cavalry charged the stormvermin. The two generals clashed – mine managed to take out one of the elves, but the woodies had the better of the encounter and routed the rats off the back table edge. The wardancers charged the gutter runners, to similar effect.

Chaarrge...

 So by the start of my second turn, I had a unit of slaves, a warpfire thrower team and a poisoned wind globadier left on the table (the rat ogres made it to the table edge at the start of the turn)! Carnage. I managed to get a shot off at the elf cavalry with the warpfire thrower. Two elves were immolated and the general became a pile of goo. Success!

Guys? Where is everyone? Guys?

 Next turn saw the inevitable happen. 25 elf archers opened up on the slaves. The one model that survived the onslaught quite sensibly panicked and headed for the hills. The cavalry charged and destroyed the warpfire thrower. Game over! With two skaven models left on the table, we called it a night.

Can't we just be friends?

Despite getting my arse handed to me, it was a fun game! I certainly learned a lot. The main lesson was that I need a bigger board. 3’x3’ didn’t give me enough chance to get away from the table edges before I started failing rout and panic tests. With a move of 5”, this means that skaven will usually be off the board before they can rally especially when they’re hit by massed archers.

Ok, we'll call it a draw

This is compounded in a low points cost game, because the smaller unit sizes mean that it only takes four or five casualties before rout tests come into play. With low Ld for skaven, this is a recipe for disaster! With a bigger table and an army of 1,000 points plus, I think skaven would be more competitive.

That said, in low points value games I think I’d ditch the rat ogres in favour of more clanrats. The ogres are too vulnerable in such a small unit, and I think a bigger unit would be putting too many eggs in one basket in a 700 point game. Either that or get a second handler, I suppose.

But also I think my tactics were a bit lacking. I should have put my general in the middle of the table to take advantage of his Ld and just pressed ahead up the guts. The gutter runners should have gone ahead to screen the units behind them from one of the archer units, with the fire thrower following close to soften up the enemy. The rat ogres could have held the left flank themselves (if the handler didn’t get hit), and the slaves could soak up a bit of attention on the right flank.

So looks like my next big project is making a gaming table! Until next time, happy gaming!