Making a Modular Multi-Level Gaming Table

On the Spartan Games Community there was some talk about the table that was used for the Planetfall game at Claymore earlier this year. This features areas where the terrain dips below the surface of the other tiles, and people were speculating exactly how this was done. I want to show you the basic principles of this as it's actually much easier than many might think!

So, the modular tiles used at Claymore are 2' x 2', based on a simple wooden frame about 7cm deep. These are topped with boards in the majority of cases, but some are sculpted in negative.

To make a table like this is surprisingly easy - first you need some wood, I used eight pieces of 1.8m x 70mm x 17mm (about 6' x 2.5" x 2/3"), which cost around £20. The first thing to do with this is measure 2' lengths - we'll need 12 of these in total for six 2' squares.

Make sure you mark the side to cut on here, as you want them to be as accurate as possible.

I used a jigsaw as I wanted the edges to be as clean as I could get them, but feel free to use whatever means you have.

Now for the other two sides of each square, we need to take the thickness of the wood into account or the squares won't end up as squares....

So I subtracted 1.5" from the 2' total width and measured out these lengths too;

Next step is to pre-drill the holes in the long sections.

Once this is all done, its time to start joining the sections together. Here you can either pre-drill the holes into the ends, or you can just go straight ahead and screw them in. Whichever you do, make sure the sections are at 90 degrees (or as close as you're able to get them).

Once all four sides are connected, it's time to put the board on top. I used hardboard, which is under £6 for a 2' by 4' sheet. With these dimensions, all that's needed is to cut it in half.

To attach to the frame, first put a bead of glue around the top of the frame.

Then pop the frame onto the hardboard. If you want to put the hardboard onto the frame, that's fine too - I tried it both ways and there's no difference with either way.

If you put the frame on the hardboard, you now have to invert the whole assembly. Then the board needs to be fixed whilst the glue dries. Make sure the hardboard is flush with the end and secure a single corner using a panel pin.

No you'll see how straight you made your frame! If it's perfect, the hardboard will align nicely with all the edges. if it doesn't, now is your chance to pull it into shape and secure at the far corner with another pin.

Once square, you can go ahead and add more panel pins to ensure the board is firmly attached - I used three per side plus the corner pins. Now you should have a nice, strong but relatively light baseboard almost 3" high.

You just have to repeat that five more times and you're done!....except I only based the next three of my frames, and left two open. This is because I want to use the open frames to build terrain below the frame level.

Here are four of the frames all laid out....

And again, with one of the "open" frames that will be built down...

This was easy to do, and doesn't take long at all - to create four closed and two open squares took me 2 hours from scratch (including all the measuring etc), and cost just over £30 - not bad for a modular 6' x 4' table. Next time I'll look at detailing and dressing the table, and building down into those open frames. I hope this has inspired some of you out there to try something similar, and I'll see you next time!

Tarakian Patrol Fleet unboxing

So after the right and proper Zenian love I've been showing of late, I thought I'd achieve a small amount of balance by putting up an unboxing of the new Tarakian Patrol Fleet. As ever, this comes with a glossy sleeve with some lovely photography of the SG studio models, with renders and fluff etc on the reverse.

Opening the box, you once again get the models in bubble-wrap bags, parts & tokens in press-seal bags, plus tokens etc. The newer box sets also contain the revised TAC cards with clipped corners and white border.

Getting all the resin out, you get quite a haul;

Now the old Tarakian battleship was quite a brick, and the new one follows that mantra. It is cast as a single-piece hull with drop-ons for the engines and flight pegs (both of which it shares with the cruisers).

Size-wise it is a monolith - here's the hull compared to a standard Chironex cruiser;

As you can see, it completely dwarfs the cruiser! The Tarakian cruisers are two-piece, the main hull and the same drop-on engine sections as mentioned above.

The flight peg piece drops in an insert on the bottom of the cruiser quite nicely - better than the over-large and too-shallow holes the old Sulan had!

A front view - quite how Spartan manage to cast a single piece with this sort of cut-in is beyond me - they're very clever people!

The  cruisers always were short n stumpy, as shown here, but they feel SOLID! There is a great feeling of stability and robustness about the Tarakians (which I suppose fits them well, fleeing from a great, dark, unknown enemy!). Next up in the box are the Frigates, the replacements for the old metal ones;

These are two-piece, the main hull...

...and the engine section.

Very nicely cast and very much in theme with the old models, though on steroids! The frigates are much chunkier than the pewter versions, as is the case for all of the new resin frigate models.

Finally, there are the SRS tokens for the Tarakians;

These look like something out of a 50s sci-fi movie - a flying wing and a Viper! Very nicely done, and I'm sure they'll paint up well (as they have done on the box art).

The Tarakian Patrol fleet is a nice set, which once again makes me marvel at the casting abilities of the SG guys - anyone who's ever tried to make an RTV rubber mould and cast stuff from it will tell you that it's by no means an easy or cheap process. Yet the chaps at SG manage to kick through a great deal of complex, highly detailed resin items with little more than the odd tiny bubble or pour attachment. The Tarakian ships are nicely detailed, and will paint up really well.

So there we have it, a bit of Kurak balance for all those who thought I was purely honing in on the good guys....;-) 

Ba'kash Patrol Fleet & Cruiser Group Unboxing

Courtesy of Mr Fawcett, we are now in possession of a rather nice Ba'kash patrol fleet and cruiser group (natural allies for my Relthoza), so I thought I should return the courtesy by showcasing the products here. First up, the Patrol fleet. As with the other unboxings I've done on here, and all of Spartan's releases over the past year, it follows the standard format of a glossy card sleeve over a sturdy corrugated box. The box art of the Studio models is pretty nice;

On the rear of the box is the usual little bit of fluff, plus overhead renders of the Battle Carrier, destroyers, frigates and SRS tokens.

Opening the box and taking out the contents, we get the usual three card token sheets, a set of the new TAC cards, flight stands, a bag of SRS tokens & arms, and the actual models themselves in bubble-wrap bags.

Delving deeper into the models themselves, we have the Battle Carrier and its six arms plus flight peg attachment (just the one, which was surprising given the size of it), the two destroyers with their single arms and flight peg attachments, and the the five single-piece frigates. We also have the four SRS tokens to round out the set - essential for the Battle Carrier

The Cruiser group follows a similar pattern, just in the smaller size box;

Inside this we find a familiar set of bags containing flight stands, parts and main hulls;

Opening these out we can get all the components for three cruisers - or heavy cruisers;

That's a LOT of arms!

Taking a closer look at the models, starting with the Battle Carrier, we can see just how big they are. Taking a standard Chironex cruiser, you can see just what a brute the Karrak is;

The Destroyer is ;

As you might be able to tell from the picture of the Cruisers above, some of the heavy cruiser arms weren't straight;

Fortunately these "bendy ends" are easily fixed. A cup of boiling water, immerse the part for 15 seconds or so;

Then take out, carefully bend back to straightness and cool. I do this in the kitchen so I can have a cold tap running next to the hot water, then I can bend back into shape and plunge straight under the stream so the part fixes immediately.

There we have the arm, now pretty much straight - certainly without the very pronounced bend it had previously. I only saw this on about 30% of the heavy cruiser arms (and only on the thin end parts), not on the standard arms - these are thick enough, with strengthening "ribs" not to have this problem.

Moving on from the cruisers, the frigates have certainly put on a LOT of weight since the original versions - here they are with the trusty Chironex for comparison;

Given the warping of some of the heavy cruiser arms, I can understand this, and the old frigates were always rather anaemic looking. Personally I'd have preferred a happy medium somewhere between the two, but hey, I'm not complaining!

So overall the Ba'kash are looking good, and continue the quality and themes of recent SG releases. The ships don't have open and closed options anymore, but then these were always a little bewildering previously as there was no MAR to differentiate them in game, and the heavy metal pieces did make constructing them (and keeping them that way) problematic to say the least - a little less flexibility is a small price to pay IMO for the new resin models.