Progress on the table - Fun with cardboard

I have now moved onto the next phase of my Victorian Streets gaming table - flagstones. It all begins with cardboard.

I have kept a considerable number of cereal boxes in preparation for this stage. I quickly knocked up a pattern and cut out varying sizes of cardboard pieces.

Progress on the table - Painting the flagstones

I have made some progress on my Victorian Streets table, In this post I will be showing the update I have made in painting my flagstones. The first thing I needed to do was tape up the bricks so that I could lay down a coat of black paint and PVA.

Giving my table some colour

In my last blog post you saw the first quarter of my board starting to take shape. Due to the narrow confines of the canals I knew that I would need to start painting the pieces before I could actually glue them down.

I spent quite a bit of time looking at photos of bricks and drifted back and forth on colour choices. One problem that many city tables end up with is having a table that has too many grey tones. This quickly looks dull and loses the viewer's interest. So I settled on classic red clay bricks as the foundation for my city. This would create a warm tone and would contrast nicely with any other colours I eventually use for the cobbles.

I experimented with some dry-brushing and quickly tossed that aside in favour of my trusty (but cheap) airbrush. And away we go:

The first step was actually to base coat the foam with a mixture of black paint and PVA. The foam will just absorb all the paint if you don't have the PVA to form a solid base.

I started by testing out 3 pieces to see if I liked the colours.

The start of the table

After a few experiments with the types of terrain I wanted on my table I decided it was time to actually get back to some of the board making. First though, I needed a design. I had settled on having a somewhat modular board with individual tiles and roads.

I experimented quite a bit with roads and canals of varying widths and placements and eventually settled on this:

The green is not an indication of grass, but rather a quick way for me to eyeball the different regions.

Minor progress on some Victorian buildings

Some of you may have noticed that on my buildings I had left the doorways blank and I had included some wooden doors in the frames. I have no intention of making new doors each time. I was planning on waiting for some other bits before moulding them. But the I found some cheap small rings for jewellery that will be my door handles and I went ahead with the mould.

As a reminder here are the doors.

Barrels. barrels and other casting

Greetings all

So in my last I showed you some of the barrels that I had been making. I managed to get some moulding done since then. Unfortunately, the rubber I used was a little on the stiff side. This makes getting the barrels out a little difficult and they are prone to chipping, especially at the top. Oh well, they will just have to be worn and rusted barrels.

On to the pictures. I have a fair bit to show you and plenty of lessons (read as mistakes) to learn from.

SO here was the first cast I pulled from the mould. This was a rush job to see if it pulled the detail and to see if I could get the barrels out without breaking them - I was worried about the stiffness of the mould.

Success...sort of. The tops are chipped a bit, and there are loads of air bubbles from the cast (not the mould though).

Fun with barrels

One of my favourite types of terrain on the gaming table are small pieces of scatter terrain. They are flexible and can be placed anywhere, they alter the movement of models by offering hiding places and they do all this without taking up too much space.

For my upcoming Victorian streets table I wanted to have a large number of barrels and crates ready for use on the table. However, I did not want to have to constantly make new ones. So the plan was to build a few masters and then mould them to reproduce as needed.

I started with a dowel stick and sawed it into a few pieces.


I rounded the edges with some sand paper. At this stage I was not happy with the shape, so I pulled out my Dremel and shaped it some more.

Fun with casting - proof of concept

In my last post I discussed some of my plans for my Victorian streets table. In particular I showed off my carved building masters. Well since then I have moulded and cast the first wall and the steps as my proof of concept.


I prepared the mould walls with some of my daughter's Duplo blocks. This actually not the one I moulded...it is on the left, but for some reason I only photographed this one.

Home comforts

In my last post I discussed some of my ideas for my gaming table and potential scenery. I also mentioned that the theme I am aiming for is a Victorian streets table. So I want cobbled streets and in particular I want some Tudor daub and wattle buildings as the staple building type.

My plan is to have each of these as multiple story buildings, with a stone ground floor of roughly uniform size and shape. With the second and higher floors in the daub and wattle style. These can overhang and just out as if they were added by their tenants on an ad-hoc basis as their families and businesses grew.

My plan started out with building a master for the stone works. I could see the town planners quickly throwing these down in a uniform pattern as they would be the expensive, but sturdy part of the build. With the rest going up as needed. Now carving stone and bricks into foam is a laborious and thankless task. So I built a foam master that I plan to mould and cast. The upper floors can then be assembled with foamboard as needed.

Here are some pics:
In this pic you can see the first wall being carved. The plan is to have each door on a step. This is a little trick to help confuse the eye with scale. Some of the Malifaux minis are quite tall. By raising the door on a step it is easier to have the doors taller than models without making the doors take up too much room.

Plus in older buildings the doors were actually pretty small.

Back to the construction table

One of my favourite things in this hobby is terrain making. It has been a while since I have actually gotten around to get my plans back in order. With Easter coming up (potentially in the past when this goes live) I was hoping to get some time with my saw.

So here is my next project:

A gaming table


My meager Sketchup skills threw together this plan a while back. I even have all the materials. The plan is to have a central gaming table, it is raised in this pic, but I am not sure it will be it depends on if I put in a foam base or work straight on the wood.








It might be easier to see my plans in the next pic.