Having gotten back into Necromunda in a big way, I decided to tackle a table pretty early on, though it took me a while to figure out how to go about it. The newer version of the game operates on "tiles", with a game typically taking place on a 9 tile grid, but can be on as few as six, or even just one. Official tile sets are made by Games Workshop out of their typical hard plastic and retail for around $90AUD for four. I'm not a huge fan of these tiles because they are, for some reason, slightly under 12" and are fairly light and prone to sliding across the table. Cost is, of course, also a consideration, but I tend to think more around value than simply expense for my hobby projects. Wanting my table to be at least 3'x3' so it could be of use for other miniature games as well, I considered different options.
I ended up settling on perspex sheets, 30cm square, which could be obtained for around $18 each from sign-makers, pre-cut and ready to go. There were other, even less expensive, options on the market, but I had worked with perspex before and knew it took glue and paint well with a little buffing and the weight of the plastic would keep the tiles in place during play. Thus far, I have built 8 tiles, finished painting four and have one partially built that I'm not truly happy with as it stands. The eventual plan is to expand out to enough tiles for a 4x4 grid and finally a 6x4 for really large games, but I'll also have the advantage of being able to mix up the tiles for different table set-ups, specific missions, and so on.
Currently, the tiles I have and am working on can be divided into three rough categories; Industrial, Settlement and Badlands. I'm using this concept more as a guide than anything, but I try to keep it in my mind as I build each tile. In that, each tile is also self-contained, with nothing overlapping the edges or sticking out at odd angles so that any two can be placed next to each other without fussing. The ground level "paths" don't always line up, but a sudden dead end in the Underhive is far from being off-theme. The only element I feel is lacking so far is a little height, but that's a tricky proposition, as too little can grant one team a major advantage and too much makes the floor a killing field. As a general rule, the better vantage terrain provides, the less cover at the top, which seems to work for most skirmish games.
For one particular Necromunda scenario, players use a handful of gang members on a single tile to represent a bar fight. It's a fun little game that's not meant to be taken too seriously, but can make for some interesting terrain with the addition of tables, chairs and other assorted bar scatter. The idea occurred to me to make an entire bar complex as a tile that would work for the bar fight and also fit in with my other Settlement tiles. To start with, I picked up a couple of official Necromunda terrain sets, because whilst they are expensive, they have a solid construction and good detail, so will save me a lot of work as I'm going. Already having some Ash Waste buildings, I stuck with that theme, my bar would be raised up off the ground for extra play-space on the tile.
Much to the horror of many, I'm not really into precisely measuring everything before I get started. I do measure things up, of course, but I get a lot more out of just lining everything up and eyeballing it. I've always found it very helpful with miniatures and miniature scenery to actually put it down and take a good look at it to really get an idea of how much space it will be taking up on the table. To this end, I built the floor sections of some of my hab modules and came up with this;
From this I could see that I could fit three modules on comfortably on the tile with room for more. Now knowing that my plan should work, I could kick on with the primary construction. Come back next time to see how I'm progressing.
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