I Made a Gaming Table!

I've wanted my own gaming table for years now. I've just never had the space to own one effectively. Well today was the day. My 8 year old has been asking to play Warmachine and I really didn't want to drive the 45 minutes to and from the now not so local game store. 

I found a great tutorial online, it looked simple enough and pretty inexpensive to make. Gaming Table Tutorial. I changed it up a bit as I thought that more than two slats underneath for support were over kill. I also used 3/4" MDF board, its quite a bit heaver but a lot more steady. 

So here is what I bought. As I already had a bunch of static grass from back when I used to base 40k models. 

4 ft x 4 ft sheet of plywood

3 pieces of 1"x2"x 8 ft wood strips

Playground Sand 

White Glue

Paint 

I started by cutting the 1"x2" strips into 2 x 48" and 4 x 46.5". Using these I made the under frame. Then laid it on the table top and secured it with counter sink screws (I had no idea what these were but the carpenter helping me got all giddy when he got to take out a jig thingy and use it to make the holes through the frame). The results were fantastic as we had a perfectly flat top surface with no screws. 

 Then it was time to paint it. I mixed the brown paints with white glue and a bunch of course sand. 

 Here is where things went a bit south and I ran out of paint. I was pretty sure I didn't have enough but my wife had assured me I did....

It was time to improvise. I grabbed the rest of the white glue and laid it down thick. I dumped out a bunch of smooth beach sand and laid down some green flock to make an almost beach head out of the corner of the table.

I really like how it looks but I'm a bit biased as I made the thing. 

Now it gets to dry over the weekend (the shop is closed till Monday). Then I'll hit it with a few coats of varnish and BLAM I have my very own gaming table. 

Privateer Press Choir of Menoth 1.0

Yay for painting. I was able to set an hour aside tonight and needed to get some painting done. I don't know how you feel but I get a bit shaky if I don't paint for a while. It's my addiction (just like caffeine but that's a whole other blog).

I decided to keep working on my son's Menoth. I wanted to get a good color scheme down so that I could knock out the unit decently quickly. The thing I have noticed about painting PP models is that there are so few in a unit and so few on the table (compared to things like GW games) that I find myself putting a greater effort into all the models. For example a Space Marine might get 10-15 minutes of my time where as a Chapter Master will take hours. Well with PP stuff it all seems to take hours. That isn't really a bad thing just takes a while to get it all done and painted.

Anywho here is what I was able to get done tonight. I got the golds put down. The gold on the Menofex is Vallejo Alcohol based Old Gold. The shoulder pads are Vallejo Alcohol based Red Gold, and the other lighter stuff is Vallejo Model Color Gold.

The dark red/purple is P3 Sanguinary Red with highlights. The dark metalic is P3 P3 Pig Iron, and the light silver is Vallejo Modal Air Chrome.

The model looks shiny as I took the pictures right after coating it with Varnish for the next step which will be washing. I'm thinking a brown oil wash will really help out here, it should highlight and define the edges on the whites as well as the golds.

Well that's all I have for now. See ya'll in a few days.