Wargames Wasteland HQ (Part 6 - First modular tile)

I made a doohickey!

I have started work on construction of the tiles to top my wargames table. I'd sized things in such a way that from five 8' x 4' sheets of 9mm MDF I could get:

• eight 2' x 3' sections - these would form my table top and under-table shelves,
• twenty-eight 2' x 2' tiles.

Q: Why on Earth do I need 28 tiles? 

A: I don't. I need 14 tiles.

Q; Why? It's only a 6' x 4' table - you can't fit more than 6 tiles on it? And why do you need 28 "bits"?

A: Because each one is 9mm thick and I have a hair-brained plan...

I'll try and explain.

16 of my 28 "bits" will have a river section, pond or shoreline cut into it and then be glued back-to back with another tile. The shoreline sections will be backed with a pond, and the others will be backed with an uncut square tile. I'll be doing this twice over - each tile will be double-sided with a grassy finish on one side and a wintry "ash-waste" on the other. I've tried to mock up what one set might look like in this dodgy little diagram:

This is intended to show each tile top (upper) and the lower that will be glued back-to-back with it.

The key things here are to ensure that:

Each tile is a perfect square - the local DIY store's timber cutting service did that for me.

Each river section starts and ends in exactly the same place on each tile.

That's where my doohickey comes in.

I simply got a couple of offcuts of wood & MDF left over from building the table:

You can see I've ruled a line across the bigger section - that marks where the smaller section will be screwed in place, like this:

My doohickey

I have used the tool to measure the points on the edges of the tile where the river exits. Doing this I can guarantee that each tile will be consistent and that the river will exit (as long as I cut it correctly!) in the dead center of every tile.

So, here is the end result on my first tile:

More Modular Tiles stuff:

More Wargames Table stuff:

Blood Bowl: Humans (Garroting'em Forest - Part 4 - Throwers)

I mentioned in my first post in this short series that these models are antiques (in fact, they're older than my children and two of them have left home!)

That said, they're not a precise match for what is currently the standard line-up for a Human Blood Bowl team.

You'll notice that there are indeed some Throwers, but there are also some Kickers, who for my purposes "Counts as" Throwers (well, their main job is to move the ball through the air to another player. Who cares if they use their hands or their feet, right?)

More Garroting'em Forest stuff:

Wargames Wasteland HQ (Part 4 - Table frames complete)

A big step - we have completed building the frames that will support our games table.

All four frames have been bolted together. The intention has always been that this should be built such that it could be dismantled and moved should I ever need to do so. The last thing I want to do is to put something together that I'd need to trash the shed to move!

It's not perfect - there are slight differences in levels here and there so some planing and sanding will be required to smooth it all out. But it's solid - there's no give or wobble.

More Workshop stuff:

Wargames Wasteland HQ (Part 5 - Table complete!)

This is a proper moment for me. For the first time in my hobby life, I have a dedicated set-up for Wargaming. My shed is shelved (considerable tidy-up required!) and I have completed work (with able assistance from my son, Noah) on a 6' x 4' gaming table, with under-table storage space.

The lower shelves went in a couple of days ago:

And the surface went on yesterday:

The idea is that I can use this large, flat expanse as a worktop for larger projects that need some space. The first such project will be the construction of modular tiles to form the actual gaming surface.

I'm an  obsessor. When I get an idea, it mills around in my head until I've planned it to the nth degree. Then I normally botch the actual build-phase (this one is still going OK - no surprises so far). Whilst plotting this scheme, I came up with a way of constructing the entire table surface, shelves and fourteen 2' x 2' double-sided tiles out of five 8' x 4' sheets of 9mm MDF.

Stay tuned for details of how I did it and how it's going.

More Wargames Table stuff:

Blood Bowl: Humans (Garroting'em Forest - Part 2 - Blitzers)

When I first painted this team, about 200 years ago, they were largely painted white, with orange armour and some blue fiddly bits. The orange was very washed out and they were a bit flat and uninteresting.

But I like the blue/orange combination, so this time around I decided to make that the featured colour scheme, and this is what I ended up with:

Here are my Blitzers:

More Garroting'em Forest stuff:

Blood Bowl: Humans (Garroting'em Forest - Part 3 - Catchers)

Today I present the penultimate portion of my first Human Blood Bowl team; the Catchers.

It's a general rule with me that - for reasons unknown - it takes me longer to do Blood Bowl teams than any other model type. Never worked out why. They're finished to the same sort of standard as everything else I do, so it's not that I'm going any further with them, they just tend to drag on a bit.

Which is probably why I don't do them very often. Maybe one team per year.

Anyway - here are my Catchers:

More Garroting'em Forest stuff:

Blood Bowl: Humans (Garroting'em Forest - Finished! - Whole team)

For the last post in this short series, I've collected together my whole Blood Bowl team for a group photo.

Enough said. Enjoy!

More Garroting'em Forest stuff:

Blood Bowl: Humans (Garroting'em Forest - Part 1 - Linemen)

Garroting'em Forest - a pun on the English soccer team "Nottingham Forest" with a soupcon of violence added 'cos this is Blood Bowl!

These are more of my antique models, repainted as I can now do far better than I did first time around (25+ years ago!). That said, there's something about these models that I struggled with. I don't know why, but on the whole I'm dissatisfied with them. I'm also a little burnt out on them, so I think they will stay as they are. I won't revisit them again.

And as they are antiques, things have inevitably evolved around them.

Back when these guys were made, Humans could field Kickers and Blockers as well as the Blitzers, Throwers, Catchers and Linemen that they can field these days.

So I've re-purposed Blockers as Linemen and Kickers as Throwers.

So, for your viewing pleasure, Old-style Blockers:

Old-style Linemen:

And the collected Linemen of Garroting'em Forest:

More Garroting'em Forest stuff: