Fakearse builds a tabletop.

Hi all,

Many moons ago,when I first moved to sunny Bangkok, I brought a small skirmish tabletop along with me. It's a pretty simple construction, just a grass mat glued to a mid sized whiteboard. If your mad keen to see what it looks like just have a look at the the last picture on this post I did ages ago. It's done the trick for a while, but it's a tad too small for anything other than a pure infantry battle. Also, it's and a little too fertile (green) for my vision of what a Sci-fi setting should look like, all blown up and shit.

So, not too long ago, while wishing I had a larger, blasted landscape for a tabletop, my wife and I decided that we wanted a new telly. What the hell has this got to do with a tabletop you ask? Simple, it came packaged in a massive, sturdy box. The moment I saw those poor delivery guys lugging that big arse box out of the back of their van I just knew it had the makings of a gaming table.......I got the vision you see.

Want to know more? Read on.......or is that "look on"?........whatever......just scroll down to see more, but only if you want to ok.......no pressure!

Original shape of the box.

Cut in half, along the spine, and opened up.

Hot glued it together with a few scraps and added some simple bracing around the edges. 

More bracing, to keep this fucker rigid as fuck. 

Then fully enclosed it by glueing scrap cardboard, with caulk, to the entire surface.   

Sketched out a rough plan, cut a few trenches and made a few hills.

Tried out a couple of old terrain pieces and added some more details. 

Screwed down the larger terrain pieces with wall screws.

Broke out the dunny roll & PVA and went to town with it.

Used scrap foam to make some rough rock features.

And used polystyrene to make some steps leading down to a blast door?

More bog roll. This stuff is great for adding texture. And it's cheap too!

Door from Ramshackle Games, cheers Curtis :)

Another door from Curtis, plus a poo looking shape for the top of the hill.

Old, half finished CD terrain. This will force me to finish them off.

All the terrain features glued and screwed down. This shits not going anywhere!

This tabletop is pretty big, measuring 165cm x 155cm x 7.5cm. And if I'm not careful during the rest of the build, with the box being made out of double ply cardboard, I could end up with a fucking heavy monstrosity. So, while I'm building it I'm being overly cautious with the weight of the materials I'm adding to it. Unfortunately, I'm the only one in our household that can lift heavy things, and seeing as I'll be the one storing it away vertically every time I'm finished using it, the final product has to be as light as possible. I bloody well hope it is anyway!

Anyway, there's obviously a lot more to be done, but I'm hoping to have it completed within the next few months.

Cheerio :)