A Green and Pleasant Land – Creating a Gaming Table for Barons War

I am naming the village Stockton, in homage to my favorite medieval novel series from Griff Hosker (Border Knight, try it, you will not regret it). The village, in its curent state, is quite small but we will soo expand upon it.

Let us take a look at the various elements of the village, starting with the walls, which will give me an opportunity to share how I paint stone walls for this project. I encourage you to build/print/craft many stone wall sections (low, high, broken, etc…) as they will be useful to add around your terrain to limit line of sight (LOS), impeded  movement and provide cover. Also, such walls can be used for a variety of gaming periods and worlds.

1. Prime black
2. Dry brush medium gray (I usually use American Medium Gray)
3. Spot paint individual stones using different shades of brown (I use American Dark Chocolate and Cocoa). Vary the intensity for realism. Use whatever colors fit your environment and your fancy.
4. Dry-brush with lighter shades of brown (I used American Burlap and Bleached Sand). make certain the lighter paint stays away from recesses.
5. Wash with home made wash. Avoid using hobby washes as they cost a fortune, especially in the quantity needed for terrain. Search online for a home made recipe. I use dish soap (a few drops) with acrylic medium and ink, either black, brown or green. Get a few large dropper bottles as they will make your life so much easier.
6. If needed, and once the wash is dry, apply another light dry-brish of light brown (I use American Bleached Sand).
7. Use additional black or green washes in some areas of the stone wall to show dirt or humidity.
8. If you want to show moss discoloration, you may even dry-brtush SPARSELY some areas with dark or medium green paint (Americana Forest Green is a good one).
9. I desired, create lichen with a tooth brush dipped in white or light green paint which bristles you pull back then release against the wall. LESS IS MORE. You can alternately sponge the wall with white or light green color.
10. Add moss by spreading PVA glue in some areas(corners and recesses are a good start). Then apply dark flocking to the glue and press on it to incrase adhesion. Brush lightly off after 1/2 hour to remove extra. Again, LESS IS MORE.

Your wall is done…

Now that we have a river, and a bridge to cross it, it seems natural to place vegetation as well as a path that will use that bridge.

The trees were purchased years ago from Terrain For Games (https://terrains4games.com/113-landscape-terrain ). The trees are hand made and thus they only produce them in the Summer months. Any tree you ahve is fine, really, but I strongly suggest you place them on a ‘forest’ base that will delineate the forested area and allow you to clearly define parameters affecting troops movement, LOS (line of sight) and cover. Always try to use tree clumps to break LOS and movement, so as to make the table more interesting.

For the road, I selected Forest Cart Tracks from Printable Scenery ( https://www.printablescenery.com/product/forest-cart-tracks/ ). Some people will object to the tracks on the path and some will dislike the none contiguous aspect of the files. I chose these files as I felt they offered a solid road for forested and country roads. Once I establish urban setups, i will print paved roads but feel they have no place in the woods.

Painting the road was quite easy as it consisted in:

Prime camo brown

1. Dry-brush progressively lighter shades of brown
2. I chose to not adorn the tiles with tuffs so as to be able to use them in various areas and also for storage practicality.

Now that we have a general idea of where table elements should be, it is time to place them down on the table one at a time and see how they interact. As a rule, i try to start with natural elements first. If I was planning on adding hills, I would start with them, but as I am trying to keep this table simple and flat, I will start with the river.

The modular river files I chose are from the printable scenery range – Wild River – https://www.printablescenery.com/product/wild-rivers/ I picked this set as it offers decent flexibility and could be used in a wide range of tables over  wide variety of historical periods/fantasy settings. It is a little narrow but offers options for fordable spaces as well as integration with a water mill. Sadly, it dow not ahve a bridge and I created one by adding a bridge file to the river tile on my 3D slicing software (an easy 2 mn job, just make certain the rocks from the river edge do not protrude from the bridge…)

Let us take a look in more details at a river tile.

I painted it following these steps:

1. Primed camo brown
2. Dry brushed the banks in progressively lighter brown tones using craft paints
3. Finished by painting the larger rocks in medium grey and dry brushed them light gray. The bushes were painted medium green and drybrush light green.
4. For the water, I started with a craft paint dark blue at the center and added progressively lighter ‘bands’ on each side till I reached the banks with whitish blue color. I then wet blended roughly the blue’ bands’.
5. I then used clear modge podge on the water and, once dry, applied Woodland Scenics water effect around the rocks, which dried clear. Once the effect was dry, I added white paint on and around it to reinforce the effect.

The first step in establishing a table is to determine what the ground will look like and where the future elements will need to be placed.

But even before we get into this foundational work, I want to talk about the table itself. I know you must have watched many a Youtube video where the tables presented to you were nigh perfect, in both beauty and functionality. Also, accompanying most games introduction chapters is a suggested table size. This results in a hobbyist complex, much in the way pe0ple on the Internet always look richer, happier and more glamorous (or do they/?). What I want to say to you, is that whatever table you ahve to game is fine. I know this sounds weird coming from a guy who is about to share his path to building a gaming  table for Barons War, but hear me out.  Maybe you recall playing with toy soldiers as a child, on the floor of your room, or the attic, or in the yard (I date myself but a s a kid, I did not have a PC, or the Internet so wargames on the floor with toy soldiers were awesome – well, they still are except now my back and legs protest after too long a stint laying on the floor…). So, it is important to keep in mind that when you decide to play a game, and as long as you have a surface somehow matching what the game table size requirements are, you are fine. I am not suggesting playing Kings of War on a 2×2 table (unless you go 6mm), but frankly, the difference between 6×4 and 6×3 has always seemed minimal to me, So my first two recommendations in designing your game table are

1 – Pick a game that somewhat match the playing surface you have, or determine if you can reduce the miniatures scale to match your table. The second solution means buying more miniatures at a different scale so it may be counter productive.

2 – Accept that your gaming space may not be perfect size and that is ok.

So, now that we have set expectations, I will present my current table. I am very fortunate to have a game room where i can leave my miniatures and games without any risk but that of cats disturbing the peace. My room is overcrowded, cramped, narrow and poorly lit but my toys and I dwell in this room and I am aware and much appreciative of the blessing 🙂

My gaming table is a Tabletopper first gen sitting on top of a 150 year old dining room table. The table topper is very sturdy and comes with rail accessories, which i never use due to the aforementioned narrow attribute of the room. The matt I use is the greenish one that came with the topper. I have several other ones but for this project, it will do as it is decent looking,  unobtrusive and will not interfere with our content.

So now we have the ground, at least the flat part of it and we can start to populate it. A wargame without any terrain on the table is likely to be quite boring, save if you play Tron light cycles, which frankly is very niche. But before we throw terrain on the table, let me suggest you do the following: mark every foot on the edge of the table. I chose stickers but feel free to adopt your own method. Be thoughtful about your approach though. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR DEFACING THE FAMILY DINING TABLE OR ANY PRICY TABULAR SURFACE.

Why do put silly stickers to mark every foot around our gaming table? Well, that allows us to define a square grid that will receive our terrain. That gives us two important perks:

1 – We can ensure that no 1 foot by 1 foot area if devoid of terrain (especially important in skirmish games)

2 – If you draw a sketch of your table layout, that facilitates your recreating it for real on said table with your terrain.

I chose this matt as it is an unobtrusive canvas that will allow much modularity moving forward. Of course, many more beautiful matts exist but they tend to direct the narrative of your table and I feel that, for this project, they would be a more advanced topic best left to future chapters.