Warpath Mantic open day demo table

So it’s my turn to hijack the Anarchy of Anton....

On 21^st May, Leicester Phat Katz Demo team marched to war again- or drove for 45 minutes up the M1, whichever sounds more dramatic to you. It was part two of our plans for global domination in the form of running demo games for Mantic this year. After great success on producing a table and two armies for Kings of War to take to Salute de big smoke it was now time for a chance to dip our toes into some Warpath.

Unlike the spec for KoW (a realistic limited budget for average Joe the wargamer), the Warpath table had to be BIG. Ronnie the supreme leader at Mantic- ‘all hail’, asked the demo team to produce a table that would be big, bold and more in your face than a bunch of Brokkers on a bar crawl (not his actual words). Made mainly out of the battlezones scenery the only limit would be the size of our cars, or in fact my little ford fiesta to start with. The hamsters that spend most of their time dormant in our skulls awake with a fevered energy, jumped onto their wheels and soon ideas were spewing out as we nipped back onto the motorway back to sunny Leicester.

With the ideas bouncing back and forth we soon decided on a desert city warzone with hopes that our dirty grubby mitts would get hold of the new industrial sprees to create a large refinery. 

Rough sketch to plan the table.

It was decided the table would be 6’x4’ which could split into three sections to make transport and storage easier.

The layout was then marked out, eagle eyed readers will notice a slightly evolved design.

To add more detail to the board I wanted to include roads and pavements, the roads were simply 120 grit sandpaper glues on with pritstick. I then went on the hunt for some mdf laser cut pavements, after a chat with a few guys at the gaming club I found some by a cracking company called Warbases who can be found at war-bases.co.uk the folks there also produced the movement trays we used on at the open day. Once the pavements were in place 3mm mdf was used to create the bases for the buildings to stand on and that’s when the fun started.....

Using a rubble mix made by Tim (a recipe passed from father to son since the dawn of time)and a ton of bird sand the boards were based, when this was dry the whole board was sealed to help the paint adhere to the sandpaper- in theory anyway. The boards were primed, preshaded and then sprayed with Citadel Zandri Dust. The week before the open day all hands were called to add finishing touches to the board.

So here we are in all its glory, the demo games were frantic and constant throughout the day and the demo team had a blast. I’ll leave you with some pictures from the day and allow normal service to resume.

Nick (the other one!)