I have been chatting with a few people and thought about it. I wanted to write something about great alternative materials to use other than a grass mat to do your battles on. I, for one, actually get linoeum tiles from your average Lowes or Home depot. These come in 12"x12" or 18"x18" and are very forgiving to work with. you can actually stick them directly to the wooden table you are building, but I do recommend that you add some other ahesive as if you plan to keep it upsidedown like I do as part of a two part table. The best part of it is that if you spill a drink on it, it is easy to wipe right up and get back to your playing.

Right now, I am in the planning stage of a table that will have Lineoum on both sides that I can switch depending on the mood. One side has the castle that I build from the parts from Russia and the other side will have my Uruk-Hai tent city.

Brian

I really like the idea of having a double sided gaming board. It allows you to have 2 very different settings to stage your battles. I think if I ever manage to clear enough space to construct a board I may use this. any chance you could post a a picture of the linoleum that you are using? are you using this straight or are you going to texture areas of it with sand / rocks etc? Interesting idea this

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I have 2 boards that are double sided one has a water board for things like man o war the other side is general field / forest and the other much larger board has one field/forest side and one side that was made for necromunda all kinda greyish with toxic spills etc .. prob is the bigger board is pretty heavy with so much sand glued to either side .. it works well though

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"Dont Tempt me Frodo!! .. Just Tea thank you"

here are two of the photos of the Linoleum. You can see how easy it is in the first one to paint on if you want to do something.

Normal wood glue will hold the stuff on it.


Brian

Hey that looks pretty cool - the brown works straight off and looks textured already, kind of a ready made surface

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Commission Availability : BOOKED SOLID (again lol)

More of my work at

www.ShadowandFlame.co.uk

The texture is subtle enough that if you do it can make life simple. I haven't tried to cut it for bases, but that could work also. because you aren't gluing much directly on it. It does do away with the problem of the weight that was mentioned in another post. The best part is each piece runs about 2 bucks each so you can get two sets easy enough and just flip as need. I recommend that make the frame so the pieces fit into it and make the whole table level instead of putting it directly on top. The big thing is the ahensive being strong enough without more glue. I found that if you dont use it the board will begin to seperate if put on the side or upside down.

http://www.lowes.com/pd_176464-61-A3101 ... facetInfo=

That is a picture from Lowes website, each sheet of vinyl flooring runs about 90 cents each
Brian
http://www.lowes.com/Building-Supplies/ ... s_dollar|1
those are the type of acrilic that I use as the base

I would suggest this link
http://www.zuzzy.com/
I only build terrain boards if I have places to store them. I won't be able to build a Lonely Mountain table until and if the Game store expands. I may even have to cut my work area in half At least I will get to build a new one

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"the same as a duck you must be made of wood"

That is some good looking stuff on the website. Either way it make building your own board a hell of a lot easier than it use to be. The Lineoium does take white glue really well and I was able to glue trees, rocks, and hills to my small board. The best thing to do is find the best way the works for you and keep it. For the frame, I take 1"x2 or 2"x2" to make basic frame and then screw a piece of wood right in the middle of the frame so it holds the planks with little trouble. Once You attach legs, you can flip the board by just going underneath and doing so.

Brian

Seems like a good plain. I think you should keep things like trees on separate bases. There never seem to be enough.

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"the same as a duck you must be made of wood"

I have both trees on a base and trees attached to the board. Either way it works well enough that the other can be used in a pinch.

Brian

My personal favourite alternative board of all time is using fur mat. The level of detail on it looks fantastic and you can easily just chuck it in the cupboard for storage.

http://www.elladan.de/065%20Tutorial%20Furmat/065.htm

any idea where those buildigs in the bottom picture are from?

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"Dont Tempt me Frodo!! .. Just Tea thank you"

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"the same as a duck you must be made of wood"

drum, did you make these fur mats?
they look avesome.

martijn

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"tonight you will taste man flesh!"
saruman the white

wow I would have never thought of using a fur mat for a board lol. That is a fantastic idea, and it looks good too.

My favorite material to build game boards is (4' X 8') 2" sheet Insulation Foam. It used to come in blue, but I recently found it in green...
It's extremely light weight, easy to shape and wood glue or hot glue work well for gluing materials to it.
If primed with a waterbased paint, spary paint can be used, although I prefer acrylic paints myself.
It can be purchased at large home supply stores like Lowe's or Home Depot (USA). Not sure about availablity in Europe.