Making a Desert Wargaming Table

This won’t be the first time I’ve made a wargaming table. Obviously like most people who battle it out with little miniature chaps I have a pretty generic table which hopefully can be used in nearly any Northern European type setting i.e. it a big Games Workshop paper-backed grass flocked supposedly 6’ x 4’ playing surface that I put over a 8’ x 4’ piece of chipboard. It gives me a at section at each of the table for playing the opposing armies in preparation for the game, bring on reserves during the game and somewhere to place your casualties as you suffer them.

Over the years myself and a friend (Dean) have collected a relatively good variety of 15mm houses, trees, hills etc to add variety to the table. Recently I also dummied up a stream which can cut across the table. It was all done terribly quickly and is certainly not what I would consider final.

A couple of years ago Dean and I put together a desert wadi type table (in an effort to motivate us to build North African armies) but mostly to take to Cancon and compete for the best table prize that was on offer – which I won.

I wanted a table that was modular without too much effort. Dean came up with a good design (much smarter than me – and more artistic too, the bugger) and here’s some photos of how it went together. This first 4 are just the basic board with the foam stuck to it. The foam has been cut with ye olde GW hot-wire foam cutter.

Beautiful garage!

The table was then base coated and airbrushed so it looked like this:

Once finished it looked like this:

If you want close-ups someone will have to ask!

The table went down a treat at Cancon, but ultimately proved a little hard to play on. We probably needed to add another layer of hills on some parts of the table and maybe a little Tunisian village for one of the more open layouts. However the concept worked well and as a first attempt we were pretty damn pleased with ourselves.

Sadly - as neither Dean nor I never really got around to finishing our North Arfican armies so this table sits stacked in its four parts in my garage, getting hammered when we move it to use the table it sits on. Needs some serious loving to resurrect I'm afraid.

Have fun...