This week I started painting up a GW Realms of Battle modular gaming table for my after school club. For those of you who don't know, I run an after school middle school gaming club which was lucky enough to get some funding from a state grant and I picked up some Black Reach sets for the kids to play with, and the Modular Gaming Table to play on! My club is surging, last night I had 16 kids in here all trying to play 40k. More on that in a bit.
So, now I am painting the table for the kids. So far I picked up some Krylon Ruddy Brown from Wal-Mart and had the kids take the pieces out side and spray the crap out of them. The Krylon Paint left a nice matte finish that is subtly tackey. The RoB set has a very smooth finish and models tend to slide down the hills. But that brings me to why I am posting today.
The two Flat Panels from the
GW Realms of Batle modular gaming table.
The first part was easy. I used the tried and true Black-Codex-Fortress method of painting rocks to paint the exposed cracked bedrock. Though I did not use GW paints, I just mixed shades of grey using cheap wal-mart paint. I also used the GW method of painting skulls, black-bestial-bleached. I gave the skulls a wash with Ogryn Flesh.
Close up of exposed bedrock.
The Skull Pits! (needs a few more hits of bleached)
And this is the extent of my expertise! I ask you more experienced terrain painters, what do I do next? My friend Jim has some experience with gaming terrain and has suggest a technique that uses lots of flocking, which I plan to use for the grassy areas, but what layers of colors do you guys use to create a blasted rock?
My plan is for a combination of WWII destroyed city look for the terrain pieces, I have GW buildings and some other pieces, and a sort of North Africa/wind blasted land scape/savannah for the flat areas.
A blasted out Blood Angels tank!
Honored Imperium and GW City buildings.
I will use some flocking and nice greens for some of the wide open spaces, but would like an almost desert "death valley" look for others, especially the areas surrounding the exposed bed rock.
You can see on the piece with the destroyed rhino my attempt at doing blasted dirt. It is too brown. What has worked for you guys? What I am saying to you folks is to lay on me your input. What has worked for you? Simply drybrushing? What colors?
Finally, since I am talking about my club kids. I am always looking for more to satiate their drooling needs. The little group of nerdy kids has exploded into a good sized Ork mob. The state grant from the after school program got me going and wet their appetites but I need more stuff. So I am putting out a call to you guys. I can't put up pics of the happy kids to show the smiles on their faces, but I can have them write on the blog to say thanks!
I am looking for old and new 40k stuff for the kids to play with. Take a look in the back of your closet and dig out those Eldar you started but never finished. How about those beat up Russ tanks sitting in the bottom of your bits box! I personally have a few myself that I am turning into terrain for them. The kids are not picky and are hungry for more. If you feel like giving, my club would be happy to receive. So if you have the gumption, pack up any thing you may want to donate and send it to:
Mr. Dubuque's Adventure Gaming Club room 122
Rippowam Middle School
381 High Ridge Road
Stamford, CT 06905
Jawaballs
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15 comments:
For the board itself, I'd find a brown that matches the spray brown and mix some white and yellow into it for a highlight. Drybrush that on top, followed by an even lighter highlight. From there you can decide to use flock or not.
I should add I'm painting a RoB board right now and that's the process I'm using. I'm going to add flock on top, but my flock is a custom mix from three different types so it's a more natural tone.
I'm thinking I will do more drybrushing, and only flock on some parts, like to make little trails and on areas to make the boards line up.
Hi Jawa,
With the craters I think it looks really good if you do the outline/sand parts and the center of the crater in the same colors as the board. If you paint the rocky explosion ring in the same manner as the rocks on the board, those to will really unite nicely. Something like this is shown in the latest wd.
good luck anyhow,
David
I'd love to read your grant proposal. How did you convince Connecticut to give you money to play wargames! I can barely convince Michigan that we need textbooks for my English classes!
What's your impression of the RoB generally?
Also who'd have thought it? Jawa running an after school club. Do they know you're a celebrity? :D
After school clubs get pretty solid funding as there is so much evidence that they improve academic results and reduce involvement in crime. Both of which help the government (more taxes from the first and less spending from the second)
It was actually pretty easy to get the OK on the gaming club. We play games like 40k and Talisman. Both of which promote analytical thinking, problem solving, literacy and math. Also we play games like Dungeons and Dragons and other team games which do all of the above and promote social skills as well as group dynamics. Then there is the angle of presenting a chance for the non athletes to compete and excel in an after school setting, rather than going home and playing Xbox. Finally the artistic enrichment of assembling and painting plastic toys cannot be ignored.
The strongest evidence is that some of the kids who join this club do better in school, simply because if they fail they cannot be in the club.
Thats how you get a state grant! If you want I will happily provide you with the proposal I wrote. Though, the program that we got was already there. We applied for and won the grant from the state, and they send our school money for programs. Then the teachers apply for their individual offerings, write their proposals, and get interest from the kids. The kids then choose which group they want to join and they come. Not enough kids... no club! I have to beat them away. :)
So if you are trying to get money independently from the state, good luck. I don't know if this program is a nation wide thing. Google 21st century or some such.
As for the RoB impressions, well, before I broke out the table, we were playing on one of my flat classroom tables with a couple pieces of sparse terrain. The kids were ho hum about 40k. Once I busted out the table, blammo! They got excited and wanted to play more.
I think the table is pretty sweet. Sure you can do the same thing with foamboard and some skill and time, but most attempts I have seen at that do not look any where near as good as this. Plus it breaks down into a 1'x24"x24" carry case.
Also, foamboard and the other materials are not as cheap as we think. When it's all said and done, you can spend 80-100 bucks plus hours of your time making a table, or you can buy the RoB from Spikey Bits for 20% off GW Retail. Call them and tell em Jawa sent ya!
"It was actually pretty easy to get the OK on the gaming club. We play games like 40k and Talisman. Both of which promote analytical thinking, problem solving, literacy and math. Also we play games like Dungeons and Dragons and other team games which do all of the above and promote social skills as well as group dynamics. Then there is the angle of presenting a chance for the non athletes to compete and excel in an after school setting, rather than going home and playing Xbox. Finally the artistic enrichment of assembling and painting plastic toys cannot be ignored."
Very well said.
For all of the boards I have made I always just did a simple drybrush with Wal-Mart paints. I always added in some Elmers glue also, trying to make it more durable.
I'd also just do some batches of static grass, not over the top.
It's really easy to do, and gives good results.
Hope it helps.
As far as the board goes, I would steer clear of mass drybrushing. Drybrushing produces great results on bases, but when you're dealing with 6'x4' worth of ground to cover, it's going to be hell to keep the drybrushing consistent.
To make things easier for yourself, texture the entire board first. Since you are going for a blasted desert style, I would paint the whole board with watered-down white glue, and sprinkle it with a sand/gravel mix. Seal it with another coat of watery white glue if you need to so that none of it shakes loose while you are painting. I would then spray the whole board with a light sandy color, and from there work with acrylic washes. Mix up a big batch of watered-down WalMart yellow-brown paint, and start washing the entire board. Once you have some basic depth, you can go back with slightly different color washes and experiment with making the desert look a bit more patchy, while still keeping it uniform over all. If you do your washes light enough, you won't have to drybrush at all.
If you are looking for inspiration for a bombed-out desert city, I highly recommend playing Fallout: New Vegas. They capture the visuals and feel of that atmosphere perfectly.
Wow Dex, great input. I will post up pics of the progress tomorrow. I ended up not texturing the entire board since it already had a good amount. It looks pretty good so far!
I personally always liked the look of unpainted sand for basing (now thats me most people would gasp at me for saying it). When that is drybrushed just simply chaos black that always has a niced blasted look.
The awsome part about all of the following ideas I am giving you is that each of these terrain pices can cost you only a couple of dollars and they are easy enough that one day you can have your kids build and paint these every once in awhile and they look awsome but are brutally simple.
If your looking for a cheap way to make cool terrain take some carboard and catefully take off the sides, in the middle is the perfect sheet metal once you paint it and rust it up. Add that in with some rocks, cut up straws oozing something and the occaisional plastic piece/dead tau body and you have some awsome looking quickly thrown together defences that will look great on the battlefield part. I have a few examples I can post up on my blog later tonight. And best of all its super cheap and looks awsome. You can also take the carboard inside metal sheet looking thing and make some shanty buildings out of it. I made an imperial com building and it looks awsome out of this stuff and some toothpicks. A lot of the older rulebooks have nice terrain projects int hem that got me started and I expanded. Making terrain was always something I loved to do.
If your looking for terrain or models I may be able to eventually give you some, I have to cover some other stuff first.
I had the chance to drop into my local GW store today to check out the battle board. I think you made the right choice not texturing it. There is enough texture already there to make it passable as a cracked desert landscape, and covering it with sand would clog out some of the more interesting bits.
I can't wait to see how it turns out. I'm going to start a large terrain board when I move into my house and get all that settled away, and will probably settle on a post-apoc wasteland theme.
I wonder if you club memebers will like a SM sternguard vet squad.....
Any thing and every thing! Thanks :)
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