Infinity Terrain: Spaceship in a shoe box Part 1

 

Infinity Terrain

Spaceship in a shoebox

Part 1

 

 

 

    I have been making terrain now for quite a few years. I can remember making forts for my green army men out of sticks and rocks in elementary school. I also loved Legos and Kenects! I would often build whatever was on the box then tear it apart as soon as I was done just to see what I could make out of the same pieces. So needless to say when I started war gaming back in high school with my brothers terrain building really interested me. I really wish I had pictures of my early stuff. It was really rudimentary. It's amazing what a few bucks to spend on paint and supplies plus a vehicle to take you to the hardware or hobby store will allow you to create. 

 

     So I have been posting some fairly elaborate stuff lately on the infinity subreddit and the Personal Flashpaper, an Infinity Podcast Facebook group about terrain and thought it would be neat to write up an article on my next project. There are a few things I have come to notic about tabletop war gamers. One they either love making terrain and therefore go to great lengths to make completely emersive terrain. These folks are willing to go to extreams to play on top notch tables. They will cart massive loads of terrain to events, they will spend hours making beautiful scenery that make the rest of us very jealous and they don't care how much it cost as long as the finish product places them, or at least their minis, into the world they have dreamed up. This brings me to number two, money. Money is very important, it helps fund our growing collection, allows us to travel to events, and pays the bills that way I can keep my infinity storage unit's, I mean my house's electricity and water on. Unfortunately I have to explain to my accountant aka my wife why I keep buying "toys". I can avoid most confrontation if I limit my spending which in to long run benifits me because without my accountant I would be eating Top Ramen every night. The aforementioned terrain artist do not mind spending a bit more on terrain because they enjoy that aspect of the hobby. That is as much of the game to them as scoring victory points. We on the other hand can avoid spending too much money if we make our own terrain and are willing to skip a few of the heigher end details. Lastly space and time. These two peices of logistics are often forgotten but tend to be very important. If your anything like me you not only have to manage your money wisely but your time was well to stay out of the dog house and God forbid you take up any more room with your "toys". It's not really that bad my wife gives me a fairly long leash and just reignes me in when I get nuts. Keeping these factors in mind I would like for my next project to be cheap, quick, and condensed. 

 

    My next project is going to be an entire infinity table's worth of terrain and I would like for it all to fit into a shoe box. I am going to do a boarding action table, which if you are not familiar with the term means the inside of a vessel or ship. In this case I am using a space ship, a Nomad spaceship to be exact. In the realm of Infinity the Nomads are a group of space gypsies of sorts. They do not like the government of the colonized planets and their reliance on the Aleph "Big Brother" so they fled and now colonize a fleet of spaceship that circle the know universe. There are three large mother ships within the Nomad nation; Tunguska, Corregidor, and Bakunin. Each of these ships has its own culture, character, functions and specializations within the Nomad nation and populations equivilant to small cities (around a few million). The ships are accompanied by various smaller ships and shuttles that perform different tasks, from communication and transportation to obscure subcontracting work. I am going to model my ship after one of the smaller accompanying ships instead of trying to grasp the size and scope of a "mother ship". There are 3 key elements I would like to have for various mission aspects of the games. I would like a control room located somewhere in the center area (this can substitute for an armory or any other occupy room objective), I would like a a large open loading bay room with shipping containers and the sort, and I would like some sort of engine/life support room. It is going to be a challenge to fit all of this into one shoebox but let's see what we can do!

 

Now time to quit bumping my gums, I guess technically my thumbs seeing as I am writing this from my iPad, and start with the darn project. I started with the planning stage where I gather information and sketch ideas.

   

 

You can see here that I took down the dimensions for both the box I wanted the terrain to fit into and that foam I am using. With these two in mind I came up with the best solution to maximize the use of both. It is very important that you plan what you are doing before you just start cutting things. I decided on a modular wall idea that would allow flexibility as far as doors and windows go as well as removable supports that also act as cover. I didn't want people standing there with nowhere to hide like these goofballs. We all know how this one ended for them.

 

Once planning was finished I decided to use some scrap foamcore to test out my design.

 

 

Saticfied that the walls were the correct height and the supports would hold up well enough I move on to the actual work! At this point the supplies I used were fairly common items that any of you should have around if you do much scratch built terrain. If you do not then these items are a great place to start and I would consider them must haves. 

 

 

From there you will utilize the schematics you planned out earlier and transpose them onto your foamcore. 

 

 

 Great use of space here! Isn't planning awesome? I made the walls 220mm wide and 80mm tall I was able to fit 10 onto one board. With the left over I was able to make my support pieces they are 60mm at the bottom and 30mm at the top and are 50mm tall. You should always ALWAYS meausre twice and cut once. This will save you loads throughout your hobby carreer. 

 

 

 Take a few minutes and cut everything out. I like to cut everything out all at once in stead of finishing one piece at a time. This is call the production line method. General rules for cutting foamcore are use a sharp knife, cut three times (once through each layer) and use a metal strait edge. Next was a quick test to make sure they fit in the shoe box. 

 

 

Like a glove! It's like I planned it that way... Next up was cutting out the slots for the supports to slide into. I started by measuring 10mm in on each side and drawing a 50mm tall line along those marks. 

 

I then used one of my 50mm tall precut supports as a guide to measure the thickness of the foamcore. I drew a line on the inside of each of my previously drawn lines. 

 

 

Once all the lines are drawn cut out all the slits. Remember to be very careful when measuring and cutting these. Error on the side of being too tight because if it is too lose you risk your walls falling down. 

 

 

Once the walls are completed you can begin work on the supports. These will serve to hold up your walls, connect them together and give you cover. Unless you are River Tam and can just stand in the open and kill everything with your eyes closed then you need cover. 

 

 

Look at Kaylee being smart and staying in base to base... I used the leftover edge from my foamcore and cut out 60mm by 50mm rectangles. I then measured 15mm in from each side on the top to make a sort of pyrimid shape. You can make whatever shape you want I just chose this because it felt right and was easy. I then used the first one as a stencil for the rest. 

 

 

So now that everything was cut out it was time for a test drive. I placed some of the walls together and linked them up. 

 

 

Overall I am very satisfied with the result. I can go back and cut out some doors of various sizes and maybe some windows, I have not decided if I am doing any yet. From this test I found out a few things. One is that I am going to need anywhere between 1 and 2 more sheets to give me enough walls to fill the table. Two, I would like something to hold the walls apart a certain distance, most likely a brace of some sort. Three I need to figure out how to make the corners connect in order for my passageways to hold up if any dice bounce off of them. 

 

Back to work today and came up with a few ideas. First to solve the corner idea I will be using some of the precut walls upside down to connect to each other. 

 

 

This will free up the need for spacific corner pieces  and make for perfect right angles. This also connects the walls very well making them more stable in case someone wants to act like Godzilla while moving their minis. 

 

 

I ended up cutting out two more sheets to give me a total of 30 wall sections and 24 support pieces. I feel like that is a solid amount of bulkhead to fill up a 4x4 foot square. I decided to take it to the table for placement testing. With the 3 key elements in mind I came up with a cool layout plan. 

 

 

As you can see I have not put any doors in yet because I wanted an idea of how the table would look and what kind of doors I would need. In this layout you can see that it has a room in the center with an open space for my loading bay and several smaller rooms that could act as engine or life support rooms. My next step was to cut out doors. I had to keep in mind that I wanted the walls to retain their structural integrity so I did not cut all the way down. It also makes it have a sealable door feel like you would see on a modern day ocean fairing ship. 

 

 

I plan on using the door cutouts for some of the doors and just wanted the flexibility to either have doors open or closed therefore I kept all of the cut outs and even numbered them to help when pairing them up. If you have ever worked in any kind of percision craftsmenship you know that minute imperfections will occur, this will eliminate doors not fitting in holes. You will also notice that I cut doors out in various sizes, numbers and placements. I didn't want the same hole in every wall this would make the bulkheads bland and boring. I cut a few doors into my upside down walls too. After that I gave it another test run. This time with some scatter terrain. 

 

 

I still need to make braces to hold the walls apart at a predetermined distance and may add a couple of more doors to allow for freedom of movement and open fire lanes up a little more but it is definitely at a playable level. I really cannot wait to put this table to the test and see how it plays. I will definitely be making spacific lists for this mission. Can you say shotguns and direct template weapons?

 

 

As you can see I have only used about half of the box up. I plan on making scenic pieces for those key element rooms like computer displays and consuls for the command room and random mechanical equipment stuff for the engine/life support room. I will also make some cool raised walk ways to add at least a little depth to the terrain. On a side note I did not consider the scatter terrain we will be using when I came up with the "in a shoebox" design therefore I do not think everything you would need will fit into the box. That being said I did not consider it because it was already at my gaming club and I brought it home only for set up testing. You should be able to take this box anywhere you go and utilize existing scatter terrain to accomplish a full table. Who knows maybe the other half of the box will be enough room to cover all the scatter as well. Come check out part two where I turn the rooms into rooms and create modular scenery to fill in the spaces. 

 

You're only limited by your imagination! -Chad-