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Victorian City Board


guynamedFleck

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It all started as an idea for a demo board to use at the FLGS. I wanted to try my hand at coming up with a quick and easy method for creating cobblestone streets, so the idea for a victorian city was set. As all true war-gamers know, you can never stop at 2'x2'...

My buddy (and also one of the store owners) Frank and I set up the demo board, complete with a handy paper ship to give it a test run!

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A couple of in game shots!

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All in all it was a blast to play on. A few days later, the questions started rolling in, mainly 1... Where is the rest of the board and how big is it going to be?

I had originally planned a 2'x1' & 3'x1' expansion to bring the table to a usable 3'x'3 table, but the locals would not have it! It was 4'x6' or bust. So with a suitable mental task at hand, we set to. The plans have been made and I've started this post to keep the project on track.

Stay tuned for updated progress (hopefully it comes sooner than expected)!

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What did I say? Progress is made already!

What better use of a Sunday afternoon than spending 6 hours at the flgs with a 4'x 6' piece of paper and a hand full of permanent markers?

Frank and I set to task with pencils, rulers, and a healthy dose of caffeine to design an additional 5 panels that will bring the demo table up to a full 4' x 6' table.

I have to say, from the plans we drew up, this city not only has a fully functional urban design (go miss-applied college degree) :lol:, it also boasts a train station and wrecked merchant ship! All painstakingly designed to be both visually over the top and, most importantly, playable!

Enough ranting, I should be off to the workshop! Before I go... The Plan!

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Not much to look at now, but the original board will fit into the left side, center space. The train station will be to left (top) of the layout and the port will be on the right (bottom).

One more update and this thread will be caught up to speed!

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that board looks cool! and looks real fun to play on! especially for demos!

Nice one

Awesome, first response before I even caught up with the posts! It really is a blast to play on, suitably dense terrain, yet still spacious enough to play on. Add resin barrels and crates and you can really change up the terrain between games too.

--

Here is where the board stands after about 2 days of work (and at the present moment). I have decided to tackle the project with 3 boards in the first wave, then add the last two to the other end. This way, we get a sufficiently playable 4'x4' board to use while the last 2 boards are under construction. Frank offered to build the merchant ship, so we opted for the port side of town in the initial 4 boards.

First up a general shot of the next 3 boards, in progress, to give you a better idea of the layout for the harbor side of town. The first board sits in the empty spot on the bottom left.

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The board at top left will be identical in style to the first board with the road running along the side, the other half of the fountain/well, and tons of cobblestone!

The board at top right will be the storage yard for the harbor. with a raised storage platform in the outer corner and a customs/security building that leads into the city.

The lower right board will be the harbor proper, complete with Frank's wrecked ship (currently nicknamed the "Bo-At").

Not much work done on the other half of the city, but here is a shot to give the general idea of the layout. Use your imagination to picture the other half of the fountain/well at the bottom and a road/board walk running up the right side. There will be a "T-junction" about half way up to lead into the storage yard.

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The most progress has been made on the other two boards. Here is a shot to show the work, including a few building stand-ins to give you an idea of the custom's house.

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The storage platform is finished. I have put together a few separate staircases so that the platform remains as customizable as the rest of the table. Here are a few close up shots of the platform.

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I also started on the transition from this board to the harbor. I decided that the original plan to have a raw stone (cork) transition was to rough to really be usable when unloading ships (there's that miss-applied city planning again). I think this better transitions the two boards in a more realistic way.

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I haven't done to much work on the harbor board aside from the dock. I wasn't entirely set on how to do the inside corner of the board. The outside corner was generally locked down in design as it is where Frank's Bo-At will fit, so I was able to build the main dock.

Some better shots of the dock details. The water effect will cover the bottom step, so it should give a fairly good impression that there are a few more steps under the surface.

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Another flgs regular (and I believe one of our local henchman, iirc) was awesome enough to let me in on a little secret event here in town called "Zero Landfill" and I was able to 'rescue' a textured wallpaper book. There was a perfect flagstone texture in the book that found its way onto the dock.

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The texture will eventually run all the way to the edge of the board (leading toward the storage yard pictured above) and will wrap around the curve, at least a short distance.

Frank has also been hard at work and below are the first shots of the ever elusive Bo-At! The boat disappears off the edge of the table due to its angle, which explains the sharp angles on the far side. Believe me this is a big boat, 9" width and if I remember correctly, about 23" long. It should make for a great corner deployment.

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Alright, now you are all up to date on the project! I hope you guys like it thus far!

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The buildings are based on the old GW Mordheim buildings that have been beefed out with foam core. the Boards are based on blue sheets of insulation foam, which is also what I used to frame out the ship. I spent three hours last night working on the rigging....it may be my undoing, but it will look awesome!

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That's it. I'm moving to Cincinnati

I already live near Cincinnati!

What game store? I am just getting into Malifaux and would love to meet other locals to play with / against. I just finished painting my Perdita Starter box and have to do my sons Lilith Starter box then we will be ready for small games until we get more minis!!

Tim

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Ah man, now the pressure is on, haha. Glad to hear such positive response to the boards. I'm headed out of town on business this afternoon, so no updates from me until at least Sunday, but I'll try to hit all the current questions.

Looks like you have all met Frank now, hopefully he will get you an update or two on the ship while I'm away.

As Frank was saying, Each board is based on 1/8" press board. I laminated (fancy way of saying I attached the foam to the board with a thin layer of emler's glue) a piece of 1 1/2" blue insulation foam to the boards to build the height and allow for recessed features.

The buildings are a hybrid of the old Mordheim card stock buildings that came with the base game. The concept is one that honestly developed out of necessity from building terrain for a game store (this stuff has to take one heck of a beating. We've actually run a "stress" test on a piece of terrain by throwing it across the room, into a wall! -Not Recommended- but it did pass). Anyway, I used sprue cutters to remove the interior clips of the plastic structure and then measured and replaces the cardstock walls with pieces of foamcore. The floors were then covered with a mix of basswood (fancy balsa) strips to create the wood floors.

The cobblestone effect is one of my favorite modeling achievements. I will try to put together a tutorial when I get around to doing the second half of the city board. In the meantime, here is a quick no frills, explanation. First off, remember the blue foam base? This is key, or you can also use a foam core base, just remove the top piece of laminated paper to expose the foam core (this is how the base of the fountain was done). I took a piece of brass tubing and crimped one end with a set of pliers to create a roughly arced-triangle shape. Heat the end of the tube (I use a candle) and then go to town stamping the foam. you can usually get about 3-4 stamps before you need reheating. Remember to rotate the tube as you go to create a more randomized stone pattern.

Cincinnati is an awesome city for wargaming. I will try to plug the store as little as possible (please, oh great forum gods, I beg your forgiveness!) I hang out at Art of War: Gaming and Miniatures. http://www.aowcinci.com/ I'll let you look into them yourself, but think of it as a GW battle bunker where you can play any games you want. Including a dedicated Malifaux night on Thursdays (last I counted was over 20 guys of every skill level).

I love making terrain and have put together a fair amount for the shop already. We also have several other really talented guys that are as equally (if not more) crazy as myself who all chip in to create a great gaming environment.

Thanks for the words of encouragement, it will certainly keep me motivated. Until next time...

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Wow, that looks awesome. The foam ship looks like it will be as big an endeavor as the rest of the table.

Selfish request - when you get up to making Victorian buildings, could you put up a few basic tips, tricks, or average measurements?

I've banged out a few ramshackle wood cabins, but I was contemplating some Victorian buildings. I would love to see some building tips.

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@ Vin - Yes, the ship is a huge endeavor, lucky for us, Frank was willing to tackle that while I roughed out the boards.

I will see what I can do as far as a tutorial for the buildings when I get to that stage. They are fairly straight forward construction and the mordheim kits set the basic dimensions. I'll throw in a couple of tricks I use on my other buildings too.

@ Sholto - I have had a few thoughts for how to upgrade the stamping tool also! I'm sure with a bit of effort one could modify a wood-burning tool (or soldering iron) with a small brass tip to keep the heat constant. Since this was originally a one off project, I figured it was easier the 'low-teck' way. Now my concerns would revolve around how to get the right temp and still allow for easy manipulation of the tool (since you are constantly rotating it).

@ Cambrius - Thanks for the kind words, but I'm not seeing this anytime in the near future. The local guys and I have a saying, "We'll take on any project, no matter how crazy, until you offer to pay us for it!" Payment, makes it work and once its work, there's no fun in it.

@ everyone else - Thanks for the encouragement! I'm back in town and back to work. Luckily for all, Frank has been hard at work on the Bo-At! Here is the latest photo...

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p.s. Does anyone know how to shrink the avatar images? I'm good with terrain, terrible with signatures!

Thanks

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Haven't had a reason to pull the cobblestone tool out and put it to use yet, but I did go ahead and take a photo of it so you all could see it. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done. Most important feature would probably be the "paper wrap comfort grip", this is essential for not burning ones hand while using the tool! I'll add some better "in-action" shots when I get to the other half of the city boards.

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Finally got a chance to put some more work into the board. With Frank moving along full steam on the Bo-At, I have continued work on the Harbor section. Here is a shot of the progress.

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I've added a smaller dock that will connect to the dock section of the original board. This should do nicely to make the boardwalk/water strip more playable. I used cork to build out the transition from the main pier into the rest of the game board (from my experience this man-made to organic feature is fairly common in harbor towns).

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The "water" is reclaimed from an old urban platform I used for mordheim. Since it wasn't seeing much use, I re-used the texture for a quick water effect base. It was originally the insert for commercial lighting. You can get this stuff in 2'x4' sections at the hardware store (Lowes in this case) and it comes in about 4 different variations, each of which has a great hobby application. only hitch is that its plastic, so cutting can be a bit tricky.

In the original paper plans, I had left the transition from the harbor board to the storage yard a bit hazy. I often find that these details are easier to work out on the fly. Here are a couple of shots to show how the end result wound up coming together. The blocks give a good transition from the rough harbor to the city and also give a nicely defined edge between the tables. Also the "flagstone" paper lines up pretty seamlessly, which may not be too apparent in the pictures since the two pieces used are different colors.

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Here are a couple of shots to show off the movable staircases that I mentioned for the platforms. Simple but effective!

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Other than the Bo-At, the harbor board only needs a few final details before its complete. Which brings us to along to the interactive portion of today's post!

in the original plan, we wanted to include a small cluster of fishing cottages. This lead to the addition of the smaller dock section. Now after adding it, I have come up with too many ideas to settle on one. Here are a couple of the ideas (aided by some pre-made terrain stand-ins), Which idea do you all (y'all?) like best?

Option A (leave it alone)

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Option B (lower wooden dock "T")

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Option C (lower wooden dock "T" & one fishing shack)

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Option D (lower wooden dock "T" & two fishing shacks)

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Option E (Lower parallel wooden dock & one fishing shack)

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Option F (Lower parallel wooden dock & two fishing shacks)

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I know its a lot of options, but the more I stare at it, the more ideas I get! Please, someone save me from this insanity!

That's all for this update. I plan to move onto to the storage yard tomorrow (to get a little break from the harbor). I'll try to take some extra pictures while I work and do a quick tutorial on the buildings.

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