Chaosheads stuck in the desert this time! (LOADS OF PICS!)

[chaoshead]

About twenty years or so ago a game came out that I fell in love with, a game that touched my inner Ork and spoke to me in a nice simple language that I could easily understand.

 

A game of Orks and vehicles, white knuckle speed and vicious combat, mutants and huge explosions all set in an arid desert wasteland.  What's not to love, right!?!?

 

That game is GORKAMORKA!

 

 

Anyway, my son, who is younger than the game by a few months, recently watched a few videos of the game on the mwg youtube channel and decided "Hey Dad, we should play a Gorkamorka campaign."

 

"We have no terrain or vehicles for the game anymore." I said calmly, trying to hide my interest and excitement thinking this would just make the subject go away because even though I love the game, this immediately raised a red flag of me building a ton of terrain and vehicles while everyone else just got to play in the end.  "We would literally have to build everything we needed.  So unless you are going to help with every single step along the way, its not happening."  I figured that would be the end of it because he is not a big fan of the building process, just the playing process.

 

There was a VERY brief moment of silence and then, "Okay....what would we have to do?"

 

We sat down that night with the books, looked at game pics and desert pics on the web, watched some of the videos on youtube from the mwg guys and made a list of scenery that we would need to play the game.

 

 

Flash forward about two weeks to two days ago when we find ourselves in one of the local home improvement stores and end up coming home with most of what we need as far as the main supplies go.  Two 2' x 4' x 1/4" sheets of mdf and one 4' x 8' x 1" sheet of insulation foam.

 

 

That night we laid out the rough ideas we had for the two cliff faces, this took quite a while actually as I kept going back and forth between depth of protrusion onto the board and playability.  I wanted them to not take up too much room but still have enough space on top to maneuver small and medium vehicles while larger ones may only be able to go in a straight line.  Each cliff also needed a single ramp for vehicle access.

 

 

The following day we sketched out the bases for the rest of the larger terrain pieces.  I had to remind him that we didn't want to waste the material so we needed to cram as much as we can onto each board.

 

 

Today we were both off so we decided to spend it working on terrain.  First thing we needed to do was to cut out all the bases.

 

 

An extra piece of mdf from an old project was also turned into a dune.

 

 

Next we laid out all the bases onto the foam and traced all the shapes, making sure we had enough space to get everything on took some rearranging but we managed it.  By a very huge bit of dumb luck when I scored the sheet of foam and broke it in two, so we could get it in the van and home, I made one piece slightly larger than the other.  While at the time I was a little bit upset at myself for not bringing a tape measure, this ended up working perfectly.  I am not sure had it ended up in exactly half that we would have been able to get everything on the two sheets half sheets.

 

 

 

We then cut out all the foam shapes and laid them out onto their respective bases to see what we ended up with.

 

 

And the extra dune.

 

 

The space shown is a 4' x 4' chunk of the game table, I think we did pretty good on not wasting the mdf.

 

The bases without foam are not getting a full level, just a small ring around the edge and will represent the tar pits, mine and chem pool.

 

The dunes were all attached to their bases with liquid nails, weighed down and left to dry for the night.

 

 

That's where we are now, not too bad for one day really.

 

We both had fun and he is already talking about getting a trukk and chopping it up to make it into a lower riding trukk to run over my grots...because I guess that is what I am playing again...probably, I like the little underdogs.

Edited November 18, 2016 by chaoshead

[Glitterwolf]

Supercool to be able to do this with him!!!

 

There are many cars and bike models out there, some of the original Gorkamorka stuff can still be found through resellers.

 

Good luck!

[malefactus]

EXCELLENT START! The board has as much UBERCOOL potential as the game itself. Have FUN with both!

[Chaoswolf]

Awesome!! I thoroughly enjoyed your other terrain project, I'll be following this one closely, too.

 

Even better that you're getting to do this with your son.

[chaoshead]

Thanks guys.

 

@Chaoswolf  --  Then I hope this thread is as good as the other.

 

@malefactus  --  I love the game, hopefully it holds up to the boys lofty standards.  He does seem pretty excited though so we shall see.  With him being involved in the build I am hoping it gives him a little more attachment to the whole thing as well.

 

@Xherman1964  --  Apparently, gw is going to re-release the original trukk model in November as a learn to paint type of kit for $25, not too bad a price for that imo.  They still offer the original buggy and track for sale, although I think these really need an upgrade.  I actually really like the new trukks and bikes so I may have to splurge and get some of those.

 

I am not sure how much will get done on this project over the next few days as our work schedules for this week are pretty messed up.

 

I did forget to add this last night though.

 

We found a piece of foamboard next to the workbench and decided to use it to make the bases for our craters.  This should be enough for both 4' x 4' tables.

 

 

I think the plan for these will be to remove most of the central crater, build up the sides, texture, paint and call them done.  Wow, that sounds so easy.  

 

Until next time, enjoy your hobby.

[lowlylowlycook]

Awesome.  

 

I'll be watching this closely because eventually I'll have to do something similar to recreate Ethiopian mesas called ambas.

[chaoshead]

The boy and I both had the afternoon off so we spent a little bit of time doing some desert sculpting.

 

We started off by drawing a rough shape of how we may want the top of the dune to look.

 

 

Then with the hand saw we went at it until the edges were sloped how we wanted or at least generally so.

 

 

 

 

Some edges are more sloped than others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Which, as you can see, makes a fairly substantial mess.

 

 

After some sanding they look good enough that just some paint would probably be just fine but we will be adding some sand.

 

 

 

The lot sanded and awaiting the next step.

 

 

But wait, I hear some of you saying, "That isn't all of the dunes that you were going to make!"

 

Well, you would be correct.  The rest we decided to make into taller dunes so added another layer of foam and back under the weights they went.

 

 

I am sure some of you are saying, "Boy, there are much better, easier, faster ways of doing this without all the mess and hassle."

 

You would be correct and I do have a hot foam knife that would have made this whole stage easier and a ton faster.  However, I find the knife gets so hot that it has a tendency to melt the foam and leave huge melted holes in the foam.  I find it very hard to regulate the temp on the thing.  Not only that but it usually leaves a very hard edge, I don't mean the angle, I mean that the material tends to melt and then cool together forming a very hard line of cooled foam that is not the easiest thing to deal with.

 

I use to have a hot wire cutter around here somewhere but I can not find it to save the boys soul, too bad 'cause I kind of like him.

 

That's it for today, more in a few days.

 

Enjoy our hobby.

[ub3r_n3rd]

Ooooooooo!

[Mad Jack]

 The quality of a man's work can be judged on the quantity of the mess it made... 

[TGP]

@chaoshead

 

This:

 

 

– Does not melt foam (unlike all other kinds of spray paint).

 

– Creates instant sand dunes (if a foam hill is sprayed with it).

 

I dunno if that is a product you can source. But if you can, it's pretty nifty.

[lowlylowlycook]

Would you recommend not getting 2-inch foam?

[malefactus]

I haven't tried the 2" variety myself; re, it hasn't been available where I live, but I'd would like trying it if the opportunity presented itself....you never know what will work best until you've tried it.

[chaoshead]

@TGP  --  Thank you sir, I was actually considering trying to find something like that to try to save some time.  The downside may be cost though, I will have to look into it.  The 50# bag of sand, probably WAY more than I will ever use, after my sons discount will be $3.78, plus a big bottle of pva is pretty cheap, hard to beat the price.

 

@Mad Jack  --  If that is the case this project is not going to be very high quality as that was a pretty mild mess.      

 

@lowlylowlycook  --  Depending on your project I would definitely say go for 2" foam!  It has the same working properties it is just thicker meaning less seam lines for thicker pieces of terrain.  As you will see below you may also save yourself some headaches and time using the thicker foam.  I used the 1" because it is what the store had and what I had left over.  

 

So, the double layers of foam that were adhered with liquid nails had some mixed results.

 

The really good one was pretty much perfect.

 

 

This one just needed some more time under the slightly readjusted weights but still has a slight warped edge of foam that I couldn't get to contact.

 

 

These two on the other hand had pieces of warped foam used because I don't really like to waste this stuff and secondly because I thought the liquid nails would hold it.

 

The better of the two.

 

 

The problem child.  This gap runs pretty much around the entire perimeter of the piece.

 

 

So, those two dunes got slapped together with a few scraps and were put under real pressure under all the clamps I have to sit for another twenty four hours or so.

 

 

We shall see if that helps when we get back to this on Sunday.

 

This is just one of the obstacles that can occur when using multiple layers of the foam.

 

 

[Chaoswolf]

Could you use some of the scraps from the cutting process to fix/hide/blend in the gaps?

[chaoshead]

@Chaoswolf  --  Yup, can and will as it looks like we may have to do just that.

 

Just got home from a very successful fundraiser for breast cancer research and checked on the multilayer stuff, phone is too dead to take pics so maybe tomorrow.

 

Still looks like there is a sizable separation on the one dune while the other looks a little better.

 

I will take another look tomorrow when I have less alcohol and more sleep in me.