Dreaming Big - Building a Gaming Table

Several months ago, a friend introduced me to the idea of Realm of Battle Gameboards. Essentially, these are 2x2 boards with grass and hills build in to them. They're great because they are an easy-to-store gaming area that adds a greater sense of immersion than a green felt cloth draped over a table.

Since $300 is a bit high, we started talking about "do it yourself" options. We found several guides, but it never left the "what if" stage for us. However, since then I've always dreamed of having an elegant board to play games on.
The problem with a project of that size is that you need real motivation to get it done. My game group has more than enough terrain pieces already, so I never felt compelled to push ahead with a huge project like this. But with my Coat of Paint BatReps begging me to be made, I find that I have a great excuse to finally plunge ahead and make some great looking terrain for my at-home use!

As always, I'm stuck on the direction I want to take. Making several 2x2 boards similar to Realm of Battle is the easiest route. With that I can do hills, deserts, barren wastelands, etc., which will accommodate almost any sort of extra terrain I want to put on top of it. However, easy isn't always fun.

I've also seen people go a bit more extreme, with things like trenches or rivers that span across several boards. The best part about these is that natural geographical features are integrated in to the terrain, so you don't have a piece of river terrain sitting on top of grass. There's nothing wrong with that, but preformed features add quite a bit to the immersion.

The final option is a static table. This is great because it's the ultimate immersion. In addition to buildings being built in to the table and looking natural, you can add so many tiny details that you wouldn't have otherwise. Here's a jaw-dropping example of a board that could still be modular, but requires no extra terrain and is really made to look one way.




If storage weren't an option, I would love to go this route. Unfortunately I have two kids and a wife who won't give me her half of the closet, so I think a modular table with separate terrain is my current limitation for what I can keep at home. One day I think I'd like to build something extreme for our gaming group, but for the purposes of having batreps at my house, it just isn't meant to be.

So now it's a question of what sort of terrain I want. I'm thinking of going industrial, since it would be usable with both Warhammer 40k and Warmachine. There's a lot of quality tutorials for building ruined buildings and whatnot, plus it would be easier for me to tell a story with buildings as opposed to forests. Plus I just like fighting over a ruined city more than a random place in the wilderness. If I were a WW2 gamer I may change my mind, but I want to take full advantage of my sci-fi/steampunk armies.

So at this point, I'm open to ideas about what people like to see in their city terrain. A large ruined building is the go-to answer, but I want something more than that. My gut reaction is to build a series of buildings that are progressively more destroyed as they go. However, I don't like moving around huge objects to get to the action.

Blowing holes in a bunch of walls would be the easiest solution, but I want more terrain features than just buildings. I plan on making sandbag walls and rubble piles, but surely there's more I could use! So let me know what you guys would like to see in the batreps, or just some objects that belong in a city warzone.

See you tomorrow!