Ricky Builds A Table!!

Due to the ridiculous cost of these printed/airbrushed cloth mats, I decided to just run to town and build my own gaming surface!

...And we shall call it... This Land.

So this isn't a full table due to the fact that I already have three 40k tables and a dining room table in my house.  There wasn't a need for more legs.  So what I did was just head to Home Depot and had them cut a 1/2 inch thick piece of 4'x8' MDF into four 2'x4' sheets.  I took these home and got to work.  Apropos of nothing, I discovered that when you put the back seats down in my wife's car, you can really feel the bass from the sub!  So that was fun.  Anyhoo, back to work!

And so it begins...

Once I got the sheets to the house, I just laid them all out and took a paint roller to them to get a nice coat of flat black.

Once this was dry, I got a toothbrush and some white acrylic paint.  This is one of my favorite things to do when it comes to terrain.  It's so easy and gives a great effect.  Just take the toothbrush, put some paint on the bristles, and then take your thumb and run thru the brush almost like you're lighting a cigarette lighter.  This flings paint off the brush and gives you a starry effect on the black board.

Pretend the nebulae aren't there.  I didn't have a picture with just stars.

Don't go too crazy with the stars but have fun with it.  Next, I painted the nebulae on the boards.  I've never done this before so I was super nervous about it.  What I ended up doing was taking a piece of foamcore (you can use cardstock or anything really) and cutting out a wavy line so that I could place it on the board and use it for the border of my nebula.  You then just take your airbrush and hit this border and fade out away from it.  It gives a pretty darn good effect for something that takes all of five minutes to do and it was a lot of fun!  If there's any interest, I'll do a small tutorial on how to do the nebulae.  It's so simple anyone can do it!

This one was done in blue and then I hit the borders with a sea foam green

After that, I took them to the garage to clear coat them.  That's where it all went to hell.  The clear coat I used was terrible and ended up a white powdery mess on top of my boards.  I don't know if it was temperature or bad varnish or what.  Either way, I ended up wiping all the boards down with a wet washcloth and I think it salvaged most of them.  The one I was most proud of, however, doesn't look so hot.  I'm a little bummed.  However, I can redo it in about an hour, I think.

Anyway, all in all, this project cost me about forty bucks and took me maybe two hours of work.  I'm happy with it.  Once I get a better clear coat, I'll go back and make sure this thing is really protected from gaming accidents.  Now I need to make some more terrain for this bad boy!