Warlord tables for 2012 tourney

[Stubbdog]

Sometime in February of 2012, Reaper posted their idea of having their 4 pirate faction contest similar to "Harry Potter house wars". This was taking ReaperCon to a whole new level than in past years. To not only have a theme but also make a concious effort to have most if not all of the games in the convention relate to the theme in some way or another. Well, I wanted to have Warlord also follow suit. Vince suggested to me that I ask Reaper about letting us build some tables to match, for the Warlord tourney.

 

I won't get into all the details, but by the end of March, it was approved.

 

We didn't have long. Only about 6 weeks to complete. But, I was extremely happy with the end results for the time given.

 

I hope that all of the players had a good time playing on them.

 

If you are interested in seeing how the tables were made, here are links to the FULL WIP from start to finish... (well, my thread will have the final stages filled in tonight).

 

Mediterranean style pirate island:

 

http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7878

 

Darker bleaker style pirate island:

 

http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7884

[Stubbdog]

I just had someone PM and ask me about the oatmeal mixture used to get my texturing. Especially since mine ended up so different than John's. Obviously, I first have to give John full credit for the initial idea. I just took it and experimented with different ingrediants a little...

 

So... As far as my version of the mixture, here is the basic principles...

 

Your base 50:50 water and glue is going to be mainly for holding your mixture to the table and also give your initial mixture the moisture it needs to spread around the table. Remember that you will be adding in Kitty litter that sucks up moisture so it will be actually a good thing if it starts out a little too wet..

 

Your spackle is used mainly for the smoothness and thickness of your ground cover. By the way, I used a spackle from Home Depot that was this "Lightweight" spackle. It was weird at first cause it was my first time using it, but in the end I really liked it. And I was using really big scoops at a time in my mixture. A lot more than I thought I would.

 

Your kitty litter has a two part function based on which type of litter it is. But realize that you can use other things other than litter to fulfill the first part if this too. The first thing the litter does is provide your bumpiness and texture. If you use the gravel based litter then obviously you are going for extremely bumpy. I did not use it for this. If you use the sawdust based litter it will really give you a mid level bumpiness. And the good part about the sawdust version is that after it hardens you can "sand it down" a little to get rid of the larger bumps. I didnt sand mine down cause I wanted that look, but John did sand his down a little and worked really well on his for his look he was going for.

 

The third type of kitty litter, the crushed nut type, gives a slightly different affect. The sawdust version does it a little but not that much or at least not for me anyway. The second thing that the litter does is... well.. what does kitty litter do? It sucks up the moisture. So, in this case after you have your oatmeal mixture and applied on the table, as it dries it sucks up the moisture causing it to constrict and create a dry cracked soil look. Which is exactly what I was going for.

 

It took me a couple of tries at it before i got the exact look i wanted. And the problem is you have to let each batch dry for a day before you can really tell that its doing what you want. But, in the end, I kinda liked having a varied look where some tables were really cracked and others were bumpy and others were smooth.

 

So, now that you have your main ingrediants, now you have to play around with how much of each ingrediant to use in the batch. This is a little more difficult for me to tell you. Partly cause I was using little shovels and a broken jar as my measuring devices. But, also cause it partly depends on how big a batch you are making. I hope this helps though give the reasons for using each or even exploring for other ingrediants which might even give a more interesting affect.

 

I can only tell you that the ratio I liked the most was 3 parts crushed nut litter to 1 part sawdust litter. The glue and spackle remained consistent in each batch for the most part.

[ixminis]

This is just super duper cool wizard wacko neat-o! In other words - Fantastic! It was great seeing them in person and I was equally thrilled to still see them in the Reaper warehouse after the CON!