Outbeak City: How to Build a 28mm Zombie Gaming Table - Part 3

Part 3 of the construction of my All Things Zombie Gaming Table.

Start at the beginning to read the whole article.

With the raised sidewalks fixed onto the battened boards is was time to go about detailing the board.

The whole philisophy behind this gaming table was detail. The idea was that every inch of the table was treated like an individual figure base, so I felt it was important to avoid shortcuts wherever possible and 'do it for real'. With that in mind I went about cutting out individual paving stones and curbs to ensure the sidewalks would take dry-brushing and ink washes.

"It's Begun!" It was about now I realised how much time this might actually take. 

The curbstones were cut 2/8'' wide and 1'' long. On the corners I switched to 1/2 '' lengths to aid with the curve.

I painted about 10-12'' of PVA at a time as I lay the tiles.

You can just about see the cuts made in the underside of the sidewalk pieces to help define the drainage. I was working away from home for a couple of months whilst I was doing this, so most of the build was done when I came home at weekends but I was able to cut out the tiles during weeknights.

Undercuts, to represent storm drains.

The sidewalks themselves consist of three rows of 6/8'' by 4.5/8''.

Like most gamers, I am a hoarder or all things that 'might be useful one day' so I had a fair amount of card sitting ready to be used. However, to ensure that there was some 'real-world' variation in the paving, to represent replaced slabs, ground heave or gentle localised subsidence, I wanted variation.

For the most part the curbstones were cereal packets and the paving was mostly the type of card that comes in a box of 5 reams of A4 paper (one at the top, one at the bottom) with of different thicknesses card randomly mixed in.

Drain cover, added with checker-plate plasti-card.

On the corners I simply alternated long and short edges to follow the line into the curve and trimmed the edges of the tiles as I went. That gave me a flat edge to work from again.

The tiles were all laid in a basic bricklaying 'running bond' style, offset by half a tile. I deliberately left a small gap between every tile, so that they were not laid exactly flush and a coat of textured paint wouldn't obscure the edges of the tiles.

I added a few random 'broken' slabs, by simply cutting them in half of in thirds at appropriate looking angles.



Finished curb and sidewalk.

To be continued...

All Things Zombie

28mm BMX Bandits

Like a few other fellow bloggers I've been having difficulty with blogger this last week, guessing it might be an i.e. and hope to be able to sort that out this week. So a short post and deviation from my All Things Zombie gaming table posts for now.

Enjoy the little things, they say. Well some of the things I enjoy really are quite little.

My good friend James, who knows I am on a quest to fill Outbreak City with all sorts of awesome 'stuff' picked me up these BMXs for my birthday. In his words "I thought they'd look great just lying in the street." Thank you James!

The red bike and the blue bike had a race.

If you buy it and paint it right away it doesn't count...right...and if someone else buys it for you and you paint it right away, even better.

I always wanted a Raleigh Burner.

What I got was a Grifter instead.

These 28mm scale bikes are available from Black Cat Bases, as well as all sorts of other fantastic street-filling detritus, junk, bottles, cans and other waste that I can't wait to get my grubby little mitts on. Well worth checking out.

Outbreak City - How to Build a 28mm Zombie Gaming Table - Part 2

Missed part 1 of this article?

Part 2 of the construction of my All Things Zombie Outbreak City gaming table.

Once I had three identical 2' by 4' battened boards. I lay them side by side and marked the roads and sidewalks.

Measure twice. Draw once. Check, correct and re-draw.

To accommodate tollerances (and my shoddy woodworking) I swapped the boards around as I went, to check that they lined up on every side.

A note on road sizes. I opted for a four inch (10.2 cm) road width, the same approximate size as World Works Games roads, as it strikes a good balance between aesthetics and playability when trying to retain a city-block feel to the table.

Once I was comfortable the measurements I cut to size the second layer sections in 3mm MDF. Being above the level of the roads, this level would represent the sidewalks and hard-standing of the city.

Note: No round corners yets.

I laid out all the sections to check everything was going to fit ok and once I was sure it was within acceptable limits, I cut curves of the top layer into the corners with a jigsaw.

This was also the stage I added a few dropped curbs and cut small notches in the underside of the top layer to represent storm drains. In retrospect, to go the extra mile, I would have cut the storm drains a little deeper and routed small holes in corresponding locations in the sides roads to match.

Finally I fixed the curbs to the base-boards with PVA and, after leaving it to dry for a few days, marked two inch sidewalks onto these sections.

To be continued...

All Things Zombie

Outbreak City - How to Build a 28mm Zombie Gaming Table - Part 1

So, I'd agreed to run a display game at the Eastern Front Wargames Show last year I wanted to make sure the gaming board looked very much a part of the whole set up as I could.

Outbreak City at Eastern Front 2011 - Unfinished, but the foundation is there.

I take most of my 'new toys and figures' photographs on a 2' by 4' section of city board I build a few years back and for games, I use a 4' by 4' board built for a Lord of The Rings 'Shadow and Flame' campaign. Fine for getting the project off the ground and getting some games in but I really wanted to create a new gaming surface dedicated to Modern Zombie gaming.

All Things Zombie is normally played on a 3' by 3' table but to ensure the game didn't look out of place in the context of a big hall next to other large-table games, I decided on a 6' by 4' layout.

Inspired by this EPIC teaser shot from The Extraordinarii and I had a good idea of what I was after. 

The Extraordinarii's amazing 'Small Town USA' layout.

The devil is in the detail on this board: modelled surface with 3D detail, raised curbs, recessed roads, sidewalks and man-hole covers, street furniture, signs, stop-lights, telephone boxes and varying textures and colours. I love the fact this table is quite light and eventually, those are the shades and tones I am after.

I trimmed some A4 paper to scale and began sketching and after a few calculations I set off to the local hardware stores, B&Q and Homebase here in the UK, to buy some timber.

They conveniently sell 6mm MDF in 3' by 4' sheets, and I selected 38mm deep softwood to batten the sheets.

One board down.

I created the batten frame and everything was glued and screwed with all every drill hole counter-sunk.

The batten frame.

I only have one old drill, on a cord, so I had to switch the drill bit and counter-sink back and forth, using a chuck-key for every individual drill hole. My advice; buy or borrow a paired cordless drill set (that's my future plan) and have them set up ready, it will save loads of time.

3 completed base-boards.

Something that bugs me about modular gaming tables is when you accidentally knock them (and I tend to do that) and they shift out of alignment.

To stop this I drilled holes through the battening in every side so that the boards could be fixed together.

Guide holes for linking the boards.

I used a slightly larger than necessary drill bit for these holes to accommodate for unevenness in the boards and my inability to measure drill holes correctly. It worked out fine.

Wing-nut.

They are attached with bots and wing-nuts.

Bolt head.

An extra bit of time and thought, but well worth the effort to avoid player created earthquakes.

To be continued...

All Things Zombie

Outbreak City at Eastern Front 2011

Only slightly more overdue than Episode 1...

Outbreak City at Eastern Front 2011

On Sunday 1st August this year Eastern Front, I made the decision to put on a display game  of All Things Zombie at the East of England Wargames Show. The show was held at St Andrews Hall in Norwich.

After announcing here I was doing so, one of our fellow bloggers, Colin (cmnash) said "I might just try and get over to Norwich to see you there!"

I knew that Colin wasn't local and seeing as he's a gamer and a zombie gamer to boot and making he effort to travel I emailed him to say "Why not play?" A few emails later and, before you know it, a plan was hatched - we were putting on a game together.

Great news because, whilst I was happy to put on the game, I'd only actually done it once beforehand and certainly not alone.

So Colin brought his massive horde of zombies, a few survivors, some wrecked cars, street furniture and a few other goodies and I brought the Risks and Rewards Deck, the gaming table and the terrain.

Colin's rather impressive zombie horde.

For a full report of the games we played, and bucket loads of pictures, check out Colin's post Eastern Front Game with Zombie Ad.

Humorously, Colin turned our display game into a full-on participation event with once quick question to a lady who scanned the board with interest, telling us it was the kind of game she and her husband could play together. "Cool, so do you wanna play?"

"Ooh, ahhh, that's how it starts. Then there's the running and screaming!"

We hadn't realised the impact us taking someone through the game might have on the other people watching. As soon as that game finished (she survived and made it off the table...just) we were approached by another group of gamers who asked "Can we get in on the next game?"

Colin and I exchanged glances and shrugs. "Errr...sure!" we replied.

Things turned ugly fast. Real ugly.

It was great to meet Colin and our combined ability to teach others to play ATZ (with equal measures of us getting the rules right and wrong, the wrong bit being mostly me) drive the narrative and lead the players into as much peril as we possibly could, worked perfectly.

We were busy with people at the table all day long, I was told we had one of the busiest tables and, most importantly we, and everyone who either played or stopped to ask questions, seemed to have a great time. It was great to meet with everyone, discuss gaming, terrain and zombies. Thanks should go to Mike and Dug who both dropped in to say hello and an extra special thank you to Dug, whose photos are shown here. My other half had the camera for a day out she had with the kids and I only had a phone to get pictures on. Epic fail.

Local 'Irwins' capture the action from the roof of the cinema.

One of the most amusing things was more than one person asking "So do you guys play a lot together?" to which we could only answer, "Actually we met a couple of hours ago."

The undead's clumsy ambush was no match for the cowgirl's firepower.

Whilst the buildings had all been built long before the show, the street layout was new and reached the stage it was seen in these pictures in the wee hours the night before the show. It is not finished, there's tons of detailing to go and I'll share the journey of it's development in some future posts.

I'm sure I'll be putting on another public game at some point in the future and this time it will likely be a participation game from the outset.

Thanks Colin, awesome stuff sir!

Happy Halloween

Sometimes you just get an idea in your head...

Jack O. Romero

...so we bought two pumkins this year.

Happy Halloween!

Where have you gotten to Zombie Ad?

I have been meaning to write this post for about a week now, no, make that about a month, erm.. actually how about more than two?

Outbreak City - Eastern Front 2011 (Figures courtesy of Colin)

In answer to a question posted by The Extraordinarii today:

"Where have you gotten to Zombie Ad?" The answer?... Life got in the way.

Life, you say, what have you been up to? In short, I...

• Almost met my match with my new Outbreak City gaming table project
• Ran a display/turned participation game with fellow blogger Colin, awesome stuff
• Worked away from home for two months (for the interactive entertainment software industry's leading publisher). In one word, EPIC!
• Battled the undead side by side with quite possibility the UK's leading expert and author on zombie survival - Sean T. Page from the Ministry of Zombies
• Played some great new Euro games
• Built a Dystopian Wars table commission
• Finished (almost) a 40K Demon Army commission
• Started a Malifaux Crew (Ressurectionists of course), just for me
• Had my busiest month yet with Zombie Shop, it's a Halloween thing
• and, to cap it all off - I started a collectable soldier and wargames figures company with my best friend JJD UK (We even sell 28mm Zombies of which I have my hands on some sets right now).

Like I said... life got in the way.

Life is at it's most exciting when you step up to the plate and say "I'll give that a go."

Blogging took a bit of a back-set so that I could spend what little time I had left with my family.

A very wise fellow blogger once said, try not to do too much otherwise you might face burnout. I'll pay a little more attention in future, thank you Bryan.

Without further ado my fellow zombie gamers... thank you for bearing with me, forthcoming posts include some of the stuff above and plenty of other bits and pieces I started but never quite got around to finishing.

Zombie Ad's back!