Clockwork Cove

[Atlantean]

A few months ago myself and two friends started building a terrain table so we would have a place to Warmachine as we are new to the game and two of us are very new to miniatures in general.

We finally finished the table last week and brought it to PAX East and we had a blast. Ross mentioned the table and had a few pictures in the PAX East thread but I will give some more details here in this thread along with some more pictures.

We will put up all the pictures on the tumblr we made here but the best I will post here.


Here is a game between me and my brother (our third game ever). My guys are the mercs on the right, he plays ret.

[Atlantean]

Linear obstacles, small obstructions, and objectives

Since we were making a dock/city table we wanted to theme all the terrain to match. Here are two inventory pictures we took before PAX East:



Most of this stuff is craft wood of various flavors (popsicle sticks, bass wood strips, etc.) and misc. parts ranging from crates and barrels to piece broken off old Mechwarrior Dark Age minis.

I will edit some more pictures of these guys as we get them uploaded.

The searchlight was actually made by a rapid prototyping machine and ran off a battery (we wanted to motorize it but ran out of time).

The sewer covers were also rapid prototyped then we made a silicon mold and cast more copies, they came out great considering that was the first time we tried something like that.

The red bases with the barrels are "explosive barrels" which we wrote some simple rules for and the off-white bases are our objective markers (themed as booze, loot, ammo, and spare parts). There are actually RFID tags in the bases so we can use them for a few scenarios when tiny, our RFID carrying GRINDjack, gets near them.

[Atlantean]

The Water tower

There was a thread here on the forums a while back that had horror stories about people throwing dice around and them falling off the table or being crooked or knocking into models. To avoid this issue on our table we built a dice tower into one of the buildings, the water tower.

These pictures were taken before we put the LEDs into the tower:





The watertower is a poster tube with some angled extrusion and bass wood. Also as you will see all over the terrain on our table we used the oil rig model kit to "steampunk-up" the various buildings and pieces.

The dice tower seemed to work well but the front lip needs to be a little higher because we did have some dice pop out and onto the table.

[Khador247]

Very cool stuff. The steampunk tower that also functions as a dice tower is full of win.

[marxlives]

Dude that terrain is so gorgeous I think I'm in love

[PG_Alviaran]

And you're new to this? You're making me jealous!

[DarkLegacy]

Wow, that stuff is amazing. If you could provide more details on the crates and barrels, those look like items I want to buy to make my terrain better!

[Atlantean]

I am glad you guys like it, I will get some more pictures up tonight. I am new to mini's but the guy who did all the painting is not. He has played WH 40k for about a decade but he has never made something this big. I did some of the design for the pieces and most of the electronics and painted the mercs you may see in the pictures.

The crates, barrels, and chests are all from the war store. Just put one of the terms in their search box and a whole bunch pop up that are cheap. I think some of them come from Hirst molds but we were too chicken to get one and try casting them ourselves until after we made the sewer covers.

[stonet13]

That is great. I would really appreciate more pics of the entire table made up. I'm currently working on a table as well in much the same theme, and really need more ideas. Your table and objectives look great.

Also, I would appreciate more info on the sewer covers and how you made them.

[Atlantean]

Here are a few pictures of the full table.




Here is a pic of us with the table, I am the big dude on the left.


This is a pic taken from the second floor to the first of the tabletop area. You can see how bright that searchlight is (5 or 6 superbright LEDs).


Here are two players from the tourney playing on the board. Due to our novice knowledge of the game we really needed to make more bridges to help with the space lost to the water.

The major components of the table are the four buildings: clock tower, pump station, power station, and the dice tower water tower along with the base table which is in two pieces. We also had a bunch of bridges (not enough) and 2 boats as well as a bunch of little terrain pieces I have a few pics of a few posts up.

The sewer covers were originally made in a rapid prototyping machine then we cast a silicon mold and made some copies. This was something we wanted to try but scared the crap out of us so we waited until nearly the end to do it and it was way easier than expected and we will probably do more of it in the future.

Also if you want to know how we have access to a rapid prototyping machine, two of us work in the robotics lab of a local university.

[ArkenTyre]

Work to be proud of. Very proud of.

[stonet13]

The table looks fantastic and fun to play on. I agree with the necessity for more bridges, as it will expand the usable area of the table, but force additional strategies and out of the box thinking. It will make for some very interesting scenarios.

Great work on this.

[stonet13]

Ohh, and in regards to your ready access to a rapid prototyping machine... "I really hate you guys" (**said in my best Cartman voice**).

[Atlantean]

Yeah what happened was that we were going to make more bridges but didn't have the correct size popsicle sticks and we still needed to finish a lot of the electronics so we just ran out of time.

We actually have access to several RP machines, one of the pluses of being a PhD engineering student.

Here are some pictures where you can see the LEDs in the buildings. We can use an RFID reader to change the color of the LEDs based on which player's turn it was.






The clock tower does work and counts down from ten minutes. We also had a Hall Effect (magnetic switch) sensor that we could use as a chess timer, which is why you see a Gobber on the little roof deck.


In this one you can see a good view of the "booze" objective marker

[Atlantean]

Here are a few more pictures of the LEDs

[Atlantean]

So I have mentioned we had an RFID reader. We actually installed it in a GRIND jack that quickly picked up the nickname "tiny". Originally we had a scenario designed where you would have to control tiny and march him near our RFID outfitted scenario markers and stuff would happen (either a buff to your army or an ambush). Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to play test it enough so we didn't have it finished for PAX East.

These pics are a little dark but here is tiny:






I do not yet have a shot of his back uploaded but he has a green LED on his back that gives feedback when an RFID is sucessfully read.

[Darguth]

I was all like, "Waiiiiit...".

Then I was like "Wooooaaaah....".

Then it was just totally like, "Yeah, maaaaaan....".

Seriously cool stuff man, kudos. Definitely an inspiration to terrain-enthusiasts like myself.

[patisarat]

This is amazing stuff! Not only does it feature technomagic beyond the ken of mortal Warmachine players, it also looks fantastic and very cohesive as a table. A++ work.

[Therat]

Nice looking table, and cool leds ..what more can you ask for!

[Kidney-Snatcher]

God damm... This is awesome!

[Atlantean]

Here are a few more pictures of the linear obstacles, objectives, explosive barrels, and bridges.


Objectives in order: spare parts, loot, booze, and ammo.

[stonet13]

Nice objectives and barricades. Those are good ideas for scenario games.

[Gdufner]

That terrain is amazing....REALLY good job!

[PG_kakita]

Holy cow those are AWESOME! And access to a rapid prototyping machine? So much envy right now =p

You know, I might have to loot your dice tower as steampunk water tank idea, and also mmm..... your searchlight.

Now to learn how to do electrical wiring....

[Atlantean]

I am glad you guys like the table, we have some in process pics that I will hopefully get uploaded later today. The dice tower was something that people seemed to love, my next one will be motorized.

We used a microcontroller and more advanced stuff (power supply instead of batteries, the RFID, the motor, pulse width modulation) in this table but we tested every LED circuit with a 9V battery first as we are actually mechanical engineers, not electrical so our circuits knowledge is not fantastic.

Here are some tips for LEDs:

- We got just about every component for the table including the LEDs from Sparkfun their website and forums are filled with good info on this kind of stuff

- The website we used to calculate resistors and pick the configuration is here. It is great at giving the resistance values and configuration that works for your power source and specific LEDs

[Tarrant]

Awesome work!! Thanks for posting the pics.

T.

[huffer0001]

simply amazing! I am struck by the awe...

[PG_Hobo]

You really have done an amazing job here, so much detail and cool little bits and pieces. Where did you source the pipes,valves,boilers from? They look very good.

[Sam Butler]

As nice as the Pics are The whole table looks even better. I should know I was there (heh) It is seriously Cool.

[Atlantean]

Where did you source the pipes,valves,boilers from? They look very good.

Just about all that stuff came from a model kit called "Chemical Plant" from Pegasus Hobbies, which is popular with a lot of people in this forum. You can find the kit at the war store for like $25. We got one to use on the table and we still actually have a few pieces left so it is worth more than twice its weight in gold, I highly recommend it.

[DarkLegacy]

Just about all that stuff came from a model kit called "Chemical Plant" from Pegasus Hobbies, which is popular with a lot of people in this forum. You can find the kit at the war store for like $25. We got one to use on the table and we still actually have a few pieces left so it is worth more than twice its weight in gold, I highly recommend it.

I concur. That kit is one of the most amazing kits you can buy to make your scenery look fantastic.

[Bronze]

Not too often that you see some well thought out electrical concepts and the reader on top of it is worth the praise.

[BostonMechanik]

Thanks for letting me play on the table. It was amazing and really added to the fun of playing the the tournament!

[saruus]

That looks so nice.

[Eglagrodion]

this really looks professional and awesome! i'd agree that some more bridges would help for playing on the table though.
do you guys have any information about how you build this? ie a WIP topic or blog, pics etc.? or articles used for inspiration?

[Sam Butler]

The proud Parents of this gaming surface.

[Defenstrator]

Wow. That's a great looking table. Really first rate. The terrain you built for it really pushes it over the top.

[Atlantean]

Thanks for the replies everyone. We have some videos and more pics to post we are just having some trouble formatting them the way we want. Should have them up soon.

[Rabid Donkey]

this really makes me want to build some terrain.

[amazonwarlord]

This is just amazing. I love so much of this ... it's simple really yet very characterful. I LOVE the functionality of the water and clock towers. That is genius.

Looking forward to the "how to" on some of this .... Grats! on a fantastic job.