Despite all of the wargaming terrain I've made over the years, I've never actually made my own proper gaming table. In fact, for well over 20 years, I've used 4 boards of completely different thicknesses, all with a badly glued down GW static grass sheet on top.
This has always bothered me, as it's always so obvious where the boards meet.

I thought it was about time I did something about this, and resolved myself to actually constructing a decent gaming space.

Unfortunately, the project has been hampered by a complete lack of experience, a multitude of decision changes, an enormous underestimation of how long this would take, and the complete and total lack of space required in order to accomplish such a mission.

This is how things have gone so far...

I first picked up some pretty cheap and naff wood to act as a base. I picked up 3 sheets of 2' by 4', and cut one longways down the middle. This wood is the same thickness as one of my existing boards, so the plan is to eventually retrofit the old board so that it will fit in with the new ones.
This will give me a multitude of different board combinations to use, with 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 foot wide tables available.

As the edges of the wood were very rough, I decided to rub some filler in there and give it a basic sand, so that it was easier to handle, and would look a lot nicer when painted. This has so far been about the only thing that has gone well.

As I look back, the most foolish decision I made was the very first one. I'd got some 6mm and 9mm polystyrene sheets from other projects in the past. The initial idea was to glue this to the wood in different areas to have 2 slightly different heights forming the basic tabletop.
However, as this was polystyrene, I knew I'd need some fancy method to keep it protected from damage.

I really should have just used some thin wood all over. What an idiot I am.

As I'd watched some Youtube terrain videos, and thought myself just as good as those guys, my first idea was to make up some home made modelling compound and completely cover all of the boards in this, to make them very hard wearing.

This would need shredding up a lot of toilet paper, and would require a lot of casting powder. Now, as shown a little while back, the casting powder I received was delivered by a wonderful Amazon driver, and the tub was split straight down the side. I managed to dispense this into an empty cement tub I'd luckily got in the shed.

As I started to glue the polystyrene to the wood, I thought that I needed to have some method of protecting the edges. To this end, I left a little gap, not taking the polystyrene to the edges. I figured I'd fill it in with modelling compound to firm it all up later. When a couple of days had gone by, I wondered what the hell my brain was doing, and realised I should have just trimmed the boards with thin wood. This meant I had to cut back and remove a little polystyrene. Luckily, the glue I'd bought wasn't super strong and I was able to peel and scrape it away.

I mixed up the modelling compound and started to add it to the joins between the different types of polystyrene, trying to smooth these out. This is when I learned that the modelling compound technique takes forever. The damn stuff sets so fast that you simply can't mix a big load and slap it all on, or it will be set before you can push it and smooth it into the correct positions.

I struggled on through the poly joins, mixing tiny little amounts of compound at a time, but my mind was already made up that this stuff was not going all over.

So I had a different idea. I chose a test area of one of the boards, and using a sieve, I gently scattered casting powder over it. Then I sprayed it down with a misting of water, before laying sheets of toilet paper on top. Then I scattered some more casting powder on top, and sprayed it down again. Then, when it started to set, I wet my fingers and smoothed it out as best I could.

This worked to a degree. Yet though it was a lot faster, it still took a long time, particularly the smoothing out part. The final nail in the coffin of this idea, is that the area did not set flat, even after all my efforts with the smoothing. There were all these lumps and ridges that just did not look natural at all.

Though I wasn't happy with that technique for the large flat areas of land, it did look like it might work for the river section, especially if I painted it right. Therefore I went ahead and covered the river bed using this method.

By this point, I was rapidly running out of time, and wouldn't have the space for much longer before the boards would need to be moved. One morning I randomly woke up at 3:15 AM and panicked so much that I jumped out of bed and started painting the boards green. Just to do something.

For some reason, it took me over 3 hours just to paint the tops of the boards. With just a few days left, this was the point I realised I'd made a massive tactical error thinking I could possibly pull this off. I really should never have bothered. I just saw people on Youtube making awesome looking boards and had the absolute gall to believe I could do something similar in the time I had available.

Still, I needed to get as much done as possible now that I was neck deep in it.

Now that the boards were green, I could see a lot of dips and divets that were not as obvious before. I used the last of my tube of wood filler to smooth these out as best I could, and then finished these areas in green also.

I then bought some heavy duty varnish and slapped this on top. I was hoping that, along with the glue and flock that would come later, it would be enough to protect the polystyrene from some wear. But after the varnish, it all still felt really fragile somehow. I knew I needed something else.

Yet more Youtube vids were scoured, and I saw a lot of people use tile grout to make very hard, and somewhat natural looking, ground for their game boards. So off I went to the local DIY store, and grabbed some grout and some soil to mix it with. Firstly, the soil had to be baked and sieved so that it went into a very clean and dry powder.

I picked one of the smaller boards, and glued the grout and soil mix down on top. Then, as instructed, I wet the surface with some isopropyl alcohol, before dousing it with sealer.

A day later, I was assuming I would have a very hard, and pretty cool looking surface. Instead, I ended up with a really odd coloured ground, that flakes off pretty easily if you so much as tickle it with your fingers, with several larger chunks breaking up and falling off.

Sigh.

Things have simply not gone well during this entire venture. And with the space I was using no longer available, the boards are stuck up the corner again until I can find somewhere (and somehow) to try and finish them off.

Over the past couple of years, we've played a few games of some new Epic rules I've been working on for a while. Throughout this time, we had wondered whether these rules could be modified for use in 40K.

Well, as there was only one way to find out, I finally managed to get a rough ruleset written out, with some basic rules for Orks, Space Marines and Tyranids. I'm classing this ruleset as a 2nd version of 40K-S, which was a game Scoob and I tried to create about a decade ago.

A little while back, Scoob and I took these rules to the tabletop, controlling the Orks and Tyranids respectively, and played a couple of games.

The first game saw us play with 3 detachments of 700pts each, and the 2nd game saw us step it up a bit with 3 detachments of 1000pts each.

Unsurprisingly from my perspective, both games ended similarly with comfortable wins for the Orks.

The first game was an absolute spanking, with a score of 1643 to 330, while the other game was at least a bit closer with 1324 to 952.

Not that these scores really mean anything, as we have no idea if the points values are anywhere near correct. In addition, there are still a bunch of things missing from the game, like psychic powers, which really didn't help the 'Nidz.

In the tabletop hobby, there aren't many things I hate having to do more than painting. However, stripping old paint is certainly one of those things. I think I would prefer to paint all of my armies twice over than to go through much more of this stripping nonsense.

But alas, these models had been waiting patiently to get a darn good strip for over a year, so I thought it was about time it got done.

Into the pot went some Epic Orks, an old Warlord Titan, and the Space Crusade Dreadnought.

After having a couple of good dunks, and after picking at the remaining paint with pins and tweezers, I got them as good as I possibly could.

Up next was the re-assembly, as I really wanted to get them undercoated in a bit of a spraying session that was coming up.

The Warlord and the Dreadnought both needed pinning, as some parts were snapped on their original joints. Typically, once this was all done, I stumbled upon the plasma gun for the Dreadnought in a random bits box. Though this was discovered too late for the stripping, I think it might be ok if I use its original paint as an undercoat, and go over it with somewhat similar colours.

In the spraying session, I got to use some new Colour Forge sprays for the first time. I fucking love these, at least as much as I have used them so far. The matt varnish in particular was very good, and really brought all that Callidus Assassin shininess back under control.

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I figured while I'd got the models out to varnish them, I may as well grab some piccies.

Some of these have waited several years for their photo op, so it's about time I did it.

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I've got upcoming plans to try and make my own wargaming boards at long last. To help me out with this, I ordered some plaster so that I could make my own modelling compound.

But what did I find when I opened the box?

Yep, that's a damn good split, and clearing all that powder up is not going to be fun. I also need to find some other container to put it in.

Thanks, Amazon.

Near the end of February, I finally got my butt in gear and started the task of finishing my Commissars. I had actually started these about 4 years ago after sorting out my other Guard characters, but as usual, my painting motivation fell off a cliff, and it's taken this long to get back to them.

Even this time, it's taken all these extra weeks to get the final details done, as an enormous Final Fantasy VII-shaped distraction landed in my lap.

In addition to the other two Commissars, I decided to give my old Yarrick model an almost totally new coat of paint over its old naff attempt, which I am much happier with.

At some point, I may actually take some proper photos of these Guard characters.

Maybe.

It's been a long time since I really knuckled down and painted something, but just before Christmas, Scoob's enthusiasm for his new Nid army started to stir the desire in me again.

I first painted some more of the Epic Evil Sunz. Those poor Orks. I just keep teasing them with the possibility of finally being finished, and then move on to something else.

Case in point, rather than carry on with the little Orks, I instead switched my attention to the Callidus Assassin that I'd stripped of paint and shoddy green stuff a few years ago.

To make up for my horrendous first effort at painting this model, I thought I should really try this time, and painted her up about as good as I am capable. It doesn't really mean much, as it's still not great, but I'm happy enough with the end result.

After painting that model, which was my first 40K model in some years, I moved on to something entirely different. For some reason, I felt like painting the character figures from my old copy of Cluedo: Super Sleuth, which is a game I've owned since the 1990s and have never played. At the same time as painting those, I thought I may as well paint the four detectives from the City Of Angels game as well.

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Here's my Callidus Assassin, Xenia Koza, back and ready for action.

I've only managed a gloss varnish so far, which is why she's so shiny. I'll get around to the matt at some point.

Probably.