Essentially I have 4 months until Cancon and, while I could easily manage with the terrain I have already own, I would like to take things up a notch from what people have already seen this year at Cancon and Phenomenon.

I am planning 10 tables and will have more tables & terrain available should player numbers warrant it. The 10 planned tables will be:

1 - Desert Table with Menite oil refinery and rigs - DONE
2 - GF9 Menite Shrine - DONE (mostly)
3 - GF9 Cryx Mining Necrite Rig
4 - GF9 Khador cannon
5 - GF9 Cygnar Research Station
6 - Trench warfare
7 - Cryx Bridge - DONE
8 - Hirst Bridges - DONE (mostly)
9 - Village - DONE
10 - Dark Ruin

This thread will follow my work as I progress these plans towards the big day.

1 - Desert table. To be honest, this table is all but done. It will use the Menite refinery building sand dunes, rocky outcrops and oil drilling rigs I have already completed.


Pics of some of the components…



(This is a WIP shot of the rocky outcrops before they copped a spray of matte varnish)




When you put it all together you get something like this…

(note the sand dunes along the table edge)

Typically, the refinery goes in the centre, flanked by the oil rigs with the sand dunes drifting in along one table edge. In the interests of variety for the players, on the 2nd day I will swap out the dunes for the rocky outcrops and also shift the positions of the refinery & rigs.

And here are some 'teaser shots' of things you can expect to see coming up in the rest of the thread...






(this one is for inspiration/planning - I don't own it)

And here are 2 of the final tables. I say final, but there may be some minor changes before Cancon. At this point I am really just organising the terrain I have to figuring out what is done and what I still need to do. Everything for these two tables has been packed into their own dedicated tubs.

Table #9 - Village. I might add a few elements to this if time permits. Most likely addition will be a road, maybe some woodpiles and other small 'villagey' touches. You may need to look carefully to make out the 2nd tier of the larger hill.






Table #7 - Cryx Bridge. The river runs North to South, effectively cutting each players deployment into 1/2. This shouldn't be to big a worry for players as their is a ford directly in front of each deployment as well as the bridge itself. The river will be shallow water. The skull-paved road is just pretty and has no accompany rules or impact on play. The skull piles will be impassible terrain, making the hills a bit problematic for players trying to take advantage of them.





Also, as noted above, the Menite shrine table (#2) needed some thought, and so it has. New plan, I am going to make a proper sand table', place the shrine in the centre and then ring it with those realistic styrene rocks I bought at Cancon a couple years ago. I also pinch the sand dunes from the refinery table (#1) and run them down one edge.

Finally, I have decided that rather than having a couple pages of 'terrain notes' in the player pack as I did last year, I am going to have a single page explaining the terrain effects for each specific table taped to the side of the relevant table. Might even add some sort of fluff.

Damn those tables look great, way to go man. I'll look forward to seeing more of this!

Cool looking tables. Hope your tourney is a success.

Thanks guys. And here are some more...

#1 Desert table. This one was always going to be a dawdle. All I have really done is lay out stuff i already had and then pack it away as a specific set for future use.






#2 GF9 Menite Shrine. The only difference at Cancon is that the cloth will instead be an actual layer of sand. This table will derive its value from 2 points - the cool GF9 centrepiece and the novelty of playing on a proper sand table.



And finally for today, #8 - Hirst Bridges. There is still one thng I want to do for this table before Cancon, and that is to have roads leading to/from the deployments via the bridges.






And so 5/10 tables is where the easy bit stops. The remaining 5 tables all require me to make hills or more. Stay tuned to see how it goes...

ACTUAL sand table? As in, physical grains of sand on a table, unglued? Wouldnt that be... messy?

Sweet cherry pie!

I always love tables with character, nice work!

Where did you get the oil rigs from?

Not if you do it right. You have to have a raised lip all around the edge and line the table with some sort of sheeting. The sand will only be 1/2 a CM or so thick.

Pancreasboy - the oil rigs are from armourcast. They tend to be a little pricey after postage, but I have never been disappointed with their products.

Dude, don't put unglued sand there, the players and the venue will hate you. Players will get sand in all their models and card slips and stuff, and you will end up with sand all over the floor, no matter how well you try to stop it from happening. There's a reason you never see this done...
The rest of it looks freakin sweet however.

...I saw one at Cancon last year, much larger and deeper than what I am planning. Also, each of my tables will have a full 2 feet of clear space to the side of the play area where the players can keep there books, card sleeves, etc. Nothing but minis need to go on the sandy part of the table.

As to mess, its really not that complex and I am going to build/test it in advance.

Its a great idea, but I wouldnt be at all confident putting my painted minis down on a sandy table...

And in deference to such concerns I conducted the following test. Never let it be said that I am not prepared to put my own figures in harms way to placate the masses. note also that this experiment has been conducted after a rainy day/evening, so the sand contains more ambient moisture than usual.

Here is the sand am referring to. Its 'clean' sand (non-salty) as purchased from Magnetmart and used in Tom's sand box.


Here is Test Thrall Zed (before shot). I have intentionally chosen a figure with lots of depth (read 'fat rolls') so as to maximise the opportunity for sand to make its way into uncomfortable places.


Here is what I would safely consider a 'worst-case scenario'.


Here is Test Thrall Zed having been removed from the sand and blown on twice in exactly the same manner as when figures are removed from a dusty display shelf.


You may notice, there are 4 grains of sand along the rim of his helmet, which I removed with no difficulty and my finger.

the terrain looks pretty cool mate. I certainly wouldn' mind putting my pirate force in the sand trap



(So long as you paint a giant black 'X' somewhere on the sand table)

A modicum of progress to report.

1st, the Dark Ruin for table #10. As you can see I have cut a beveled, thick base of mdf for the excellent old GW terrain piece. The ruin has been glued down and ringed with spack-filler to improve the lines. Next step will be to paint the spack/mdf green before hitting it with static grass and some clump foliage bushes and maybe some long grass as well. I also want to touch up some of the detail on the ruin, adding brown to the wooden door, maybe white the skulls and so on.




Next up, some hills. These will have the edges spacked and painted as suggested in NQ for the mineshaft table. The larger hill will have the GF9 Khador cannon placed upon it, while the rest of the table is littered with craters and ruins. The medium one will have the GW cemetery piece placed upon it as indicated by the pen-marks. The smallest will simply be a hill. Note that these hills are intentionally so high that models cannot normally access them (the cemetery will have steps).

I'd be more worried about the next door neighbors cat using the sand table as a litter box..... Then you'd be in the .....

Keep up this great work, this stuff is awesome!

...you are not the 1st person to suggest that wandering cats are the greater concern :-)

Update, here are some finished pieces, the Dark Ruin and a pair of hills, for table #10.