Games Day Table Expansion

     Back in 2010 when there was actually a Games Day on the east coast we had all signed up and ran a gaming table for the event. We had a little mini game going where people could walk up with an independent character and have a duel on one of the 2'x 2' battlefields we brought along. All of our old Games Day pictures can be seen here.

Out of the two arenas I made the lava one was always my favorite, and as soon as it was finished I knew I wanted to have a full table one day built in the same fashion. My youngest brother and I have been working on and off over the last year or so with long breaks in between but finally after a big push this week we have done it!

As you can see the original mini table is in the corner and we cut pink foam to match up and make a full sized table around it. I would like to make a few more pieces of themed terrain to go with it such as a volcano or a few mountains connected by a bridge or pipes but after a year of mostly procrastination it is good to see a project crossed off the list!

Also, as an added bonus, my brother now knows how to make cool looking terrain and I can get him to make it all!

Games Day Tables Are Done Boss, Well Mostly

As the title says our games day event tables are 99% done. I got the urge to slap an led onto our ash wastes arena at the last minute when I found my old electrical engineering junk form college. Making the tables have been a blast and it was the first time I tried a lot of the things I've read in white dwarfs and blogs over the past months.


First up is the ash wastes / lava table.  The plan here was to have a bridge over some lava. It's a deep concept, I know.


This is the most vertical of our three arenas and characters that can quickly move will have a great advantage closing with the enemy. Our event is largely about getting or denying the charge and on this map a jump pack will allow for fast assaults without allowing the enemy to shoot during the approach.

 If your kitted out for a fire fight there is still plenty of cover up top though, if your scared...












TQ just sent me the pics of his ice table last night. You guys don't know how much suspense he kept me in over the last few days. TQ telling me that it was looking awesome and coming together well, but he never let us see till the very end. I wasn't surprised that it looked great when I finally got to see it. TQ is THE MAN when it comes to building scenery and all!

This table was planned out and scrapped about three or four times before TQ told me he was working on it. This table originally was gonna have frozen rivers, then mountain valleys, then a post earthquake glacial shelf. Finally one of us brought up the cool spikes coming out of the ground in Dawn Of War 2 : Chaos Rising and the Sons of Hodir town from World Of Warcraft. After saying that would be cool we went home and that was the last we talked of it.



Clearly the Ice table will require the most finesse during the approach. With plenty of open fire lanes and abundant cover to jump to around the edges this could be a shooters dream.  I would hate to be facing down a Blood Angels librarian with wings and lance on this table, or a Tau crises commander with long range weapons...

Finally, here is the first table again. The arena has plenty of center  cover and abundant room to maneuver all around it. With lots of tight fire lanes it could be both a blessing and a curse to whatever type of warrior you bring. Difficult terrain abounds with all the different elevations and the dice are always spiteful....

Be careful lest you end up like this guy....













Or him...




From foam to final it was a blast to these "mini tables" and I hope every one stops by to give our games day event a try. It was designed to be short and sweet so you can get back to pillaging the conversion contest before the terminator parts are all gone...

Tau, Now With Human Auxilliries In The Box

So Deffrolla Dan came by last night with a box of fire warriors to use as slaves on his looted wagon. He was all set to use a couple of them and sell the rest to my brother Jordan. Until he opened the box and found eight fire warriors and five cadian shock troops in the box that is. After the initial "WHAT!" moment he decided getting five guardsmen was a net increase of one model and was happy about it, but seriously, how do two fire warrior sprues and a cadian sprue get mixed up like that?

After that Dan worked on his wagon a little more and it's turning out to be really orky looking... in a looted tau sorta way...

I got the elmer's glue and sand put on my last games day arena and will hopefully get it mostly painted up tonight.

Waiting for watered down glue to dry in cracks takes forever.....

The Internet Is For Khorne!

The first of our club's Games Day arenas is ready for some blood shed! The original idea behind our clubs event was to have a colosseum of some sorts where two mighty heroes could duke it out. Knowing that we absolutely had to have this battle ground from the get go made building it a lot easier. After weeks of agonizing over how to actually build it the old "how to make a ziggurat tutorial" came to mind. A few days of foam cutting and sand sprinkling later we had this. It looked good and would soon be  ready for some paint!

After the glue finally dried two days later it was quickly painted up to this after a couple of nights.

Now at 2AM hand painting a giant symbol of the blood god sounded like a great idea. I could paint a few straight lines and be finished! The next day when my wife went down to see what kept me up till the wee hours reality set in. She told me it looked like crap and took  the liberty of putting the first coat of brown paint back on it before I could try to convince her otherwise.

Hind sight is always 20/20 and once again it proved true. After printing out a symbol and cutting it out I gave it a good splattering of GW Red Ink. My brother in law who never finishes painting his models used this on his old great unclean one and it looked pretty good, except for the fact that he covered his golden demon worthy model in tiny red dots. Luckily, my plan worked a little better.










Happy with my test results I masked off the area and put the stencil in place. Once the blood started to fly everything looked like it was going according to plan. That is until I lifted my hand to admire a job well done and realized that a drip of ink had fallen into the corner of the symbol. After my initial "OH CRAP" moment I realized it made more sense this way. If someone were to be gutted on the spot there would be a large puddle of blood with spray leading away from it. It would be perfectly logical if blood offered in the name of Khorne were to just happen to land in the shape of the blood gods emblem! This subtle symbolism was just what I was hoping for!

Here is a shot of the final paint job. I'm debating whether or not to mark out deployment zones. Next time everyone gets together for paint night well have to talk it over.

Preparing the Defenses!

So our upcoming APOCALYPSE game is less than a week away. After getting in some kill team with Jon this weekend (and hearing Jordan cry about Tyranids some more) I decided to get things ready for the big game this Saturday. Having set up the terrain I thought it would be a good idea to get a feel for how many models it could handle before it looked too packed. Really I just wanted an excuse to set up all my little men and take pictures of them but just humor me for a bit... Our game is going to be 9000 points total so it shouldn't be too over crowded. Then again there will be three Ork players and one Tyranid player, so space may become limited very quickly. Though once the Hellhammer starts firing I'm sure space will become readily available.

I picked up a few new pieces of terrain from Pegasus Hobbies last week and am very satisfied with the quality of their products. Their techno bridge was a snap to assemble (Quite literally since I haven't glued it yet, yet it holds together just fine.) and looks great with just a dusting of silver spray paint. My wife keeps bugging me to detail it more but I'm happy with it as is for now. Besides, what's a war gamer without a backlog?
The second piece I purchased  was the river. My wife had been telling me I should get one of these for months, (Its great having a wife who tells me I need more terrain!)so I finally splurged on it for a whole sixteen bucks or so. When I initially opened it I thought it looked kind of cartoonish but its been growing on me the past few days and together with the bridge it has become the staple of our kill team games. The other terrain items I got were the resin barrels and rubble piles you can see in some of the pictures. The sand bags are also from Pegasus Hobbies now that I think of it. Their prepainted resin scenery is top notch and I would recommend it to any one looking to add that extra little something to their tables. Their prices are reasonable and their selection is huge!


Rules wise I'm still up in the air about how to count this game in our planetary empires campaign. Should it count as playing all three of the guys on the other team? How to determine the bonuses form controlling tiles and such? Should we just make it a game for funsies and leave it at that? I was thinking we could just have the game count for the player across form you and use the tile bonuses that would come from that player but what do you guys think? Some of the guys who are playing this weekend haven't made a lot of the games and could use it to get some numbers in their standings. When I asked about apoc experiences in a a previous post Turuk gave me a link to this page.

http://evillearmory.blogspot.com/2010/03/what-does-it-take-to-make-big-game-good.html

The article made a lot of valid points and got me thinking of things I should be doing to facilitate a smoother game. Our game wont be nearly as huge as the ones listed but issues will surely arise. (Especially the ones about Ork players crying when their boyz get blasted!) As always comments and suggestions are appreciated. And for my players I'll post info on objectives and more rules later this week so you can start scheming!

WAAAAGGGGGGGHHHH FOR NOW GREENSKINS!! YOUR DOOM IS AT HAND!!!!