Hello All,
I just wanted to share with the group a project that was inspired by a member of another forum. I am a new player to A & A and bought my first board when the Anniversary Edition came out. I ran across a website and saw a post by Colin M I believe about how he made his board bigger. I think his was the second edition?
I will try to describe how I put this board together and share some pictures of it along the way if I can figure ou how to upload them as I go.
I started by laying out 7 drawers on 3/4" Birch 4’x8’plywood. The 6 drawers are for each of the countries and the 7th drawer is for the IPC chart, attack/defend board and the Technology chart. Once everything was where I wanted it cross supports and the drawers were mounted to the table with glue and screws. Then a 3/4"piece of oak 4’x8’ plywood was glued to the supports and screwed down. The cross supports and hardwood were necessary to stop the board from sagging under its own weight.
The idea is to have the board raised to the ceiling when not in use or a game takes longer than a day to complete. The wife is not to fond of having a 32 square foot gaming table in the middle of the basement for weeks at a time. I modified a garage storage product by Raco Products to do the lifting. It makes being able to raise or lower the table to or from the ceiling in about 10 seconds once the cables are hooked up to the board.
The next thing was to wrap the entire bottom and sides of the board as well as the drawer fronts in a camo fabric so you don’t have to look at a huge plywood box suspended in the air when its not in use.
Next was to scan all of the game parts into the computer and get them all lined up. I won’t go into that detail for this post, but you get the idea.
I then made dividers and covers in each drawer for the game pieces as well as a dice rolling area in each tray. For each dice rolling area I found some great actual WWII pictures of each countries equipmet suce as tanks, fighters, battleship and carriers. I downloaded them and printed them on vynil, each the same size of the rolling area in the drawer for a contained place to roll in to keep the dice off the table and the floor. After a few Jack and Cokes the dice can get pretty sloppy around here.
Once I had all of the files I needed to be printed I took them to work and uploaded them into out vynil printing machine and had them printed on thick outdoor vehicle vynil. This material resists any spilling and most scratching. Trying to blow this board up to 4’x8’ even on a high DPI scan is pretty tough to balance without getting blurry, but there is a balance between grainy and blurry that was tollerable.
By this time the people in ou group were getting anxious to play again and I wanted to surprise them for our next gaming session so I had to rush the last few things, but they will be fixed up in short order after our first game. I am going to reprint the board after I take the time to blend out the lines where the boards meet as well as the numbers on the board will get blended out and replaced with a crisp text. Additionally I didn’t want to wait either so I rolled the vynil out on the board and attached it with some digial camo tape for the day. When it is complete the vynil will be attached to the board top and covered with a 1/8" piece of plexiglass to protect it from the drunks in our group (Namely Me)!
At the end of the day it was awesome to see the groups faces for the first time when they saw the size of the board as well as watching it lowered from the ceiling onto the saw horses in 10 seconds, ready to play.
I hope you enjoyed the read and the pics. Please feel free to criticize or post suggestions for ways that I can improve on the board. Oh, and a special thanks to Colin M for the inspiration on getting this project started. We really all felt like “Generals” for the day while playing our first game on this size board.
Cheers!
Hmmmm Can’t post the pics…. What to do?
If you email the link to me (send me a personal message addressed to CWO Marc using the My Messages function at the top of the board), I’ll be glad to post it for you.
I’ll be away for most of the day, but if you can send me the link within the next half hour or so I’ll have time to post it before I leave.
Here are the links Mike C has provided:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39839955/2013-01-20 10.53.22.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39839955/2013-02-03 16.15.27.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39839955/2013-02-03 22.25.43.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39839955/2013-02-03 22.27.08.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39839955/Close Up Tray (1).jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39839955/Damn Glare.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39839955/Dice Rolling Area (1).jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39839955/First Set Up (1).jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39839955/Fully Raised (1).jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39839955/Lowered (1).jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39839955/Raised.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39839955/Tray (1).jpg
Good work Commander! A very fascinating design, I like the camouflage drapery and the idea to raise up the board to the ceilling! I had the same idea, but unfortunately my playing room is not high enough. I thought about an indirect light installation - lamps underneath the ceiling shining down on the up raised table could give a nice illumination. When lowering the table you have a direct light shining on the gaming area.
The drawers - personally I’m in doubt, that this will work…don’t get me wrong, it’s an absolutely nice and affectionately work, but think about the positions player will stand and move during the game. If you open the drawers, there will be not much space around the table, players may abut(t) upon the drawers inadvertently.
I completely undersand the concerns on the drawers. Actually, once the game is lowered it is placed on sawhorses in the middle of the basement (right next to the bar). There is plenty of room to traverse! My biggest complaint about the drawers is actually the lids covering the game pieces. I get tired of opening and closing the lid every time I want to put in or take out a soldier. The idea was to use the lid to show the unit costs and initial game set up. I just need to find a better home for those charts. Perhaps on the side of the board.
Cheers and thanks for the feedback!
That table is extremely cool! Awesome work. Very jealous.
Table is awsome. Nice Job.
The trays/drawers are awesome. I like how their is a compartment for each type of unit, very cool. I can’t get over the fact that you can lower this from the ceiling! That’s so freakin’ insane! Kudos for the imagination!
Very cool gaming table. I think I saw one like that on Duck Dynasty! LOL
The neighbor has a slot race track raised like that in his garage and twice as big. see them all the time in summer evenings racing. That is great for playing outside and in evenings. Very nice. If anything you could also secure tray tops and store against the wall if you couldn’t raise it. Nice job.
Nice work. Enjoy the fruits of your labor
Very nice … food for thought!! Hmm.
I just wonder how steady the lifting mechanism is if you’re pulling it up with a game in progress? Will the game pieces not shift or fall all over when left on the board? Or do you have another way around this?
No, it is solid as a rock. The cables are matched perfectly for length on all 4 sides so it rolls up and down very smooth. If you put the drill on high speed it will rattle the pieces around, but on low it is smooth as silk.
Nice! That was the one thing I was always concerned about with the idea of a table that moves up/down with pieces set up on it. I may have to consider this myself! :)
I like how your wife hates the board being set up in your basement, but she seems to be ok with you making a contraption on the ceiling that looks like a medieval draw bridge to attract even more attention haha!
I like how your wife hates the board being set up in your basement, but she seems to be ok with you making a contraption on the ceiling that looks like a medieval draw bridge to attract even more attention haha!
And besides, she’d probably take an even dimmer view of the alternative solution, which would be to install a pulley system that would raise your wife’s chair up to the ceiling (with her in it) to make room on gaming nights when you need to set up your A&A map board.
Yes, very cool 8-) I made a bigger flat top gaming table 12-13yrs ago (it was about a 4x5’) with some fold down legs so you could put the table away when not in use, but still–-wear to store a 4x5 table, even flat, was always an issue? Then I didn’t have a basement!
Now I have a basement, & the game boards (IE; AA40G w/ a 32"x70" board) are getting bigger OOB, so I threw a 4x8ft piece of plywood on top of my 4x5 game table & just covered it w/ a fabric sheet. Much better w/ the bigger AAG40 board & we still have room around the edges to put the charts & game piece boxes.
But I like your design very much, especially with blowing up the map on vinyl. Seems like no matter how big A&A game designer’s make the boards, the main territories that see all the action are still too small for all the pieces & chips that get put into it. I’m all for not contorting the map to make areas bigger, but if you can make the whole map bigger that would be great!
I too am now having the same problem w/ my wife & a 4x8 game table taking up so much space in the basement. My solution is that this year I’m converting my 2-car garage into a Den & Gaming room (with a lock on the door for my MAN Space)! I do have a very high ceiling in my garage & this design to haul the table out of the way would be great!
So if you don’t mind, I’m gonna try to use your basic design here, & tweak it a little for my situation. I have all the A&A games & have been playing w/ my kids (4-boys) for almost 25yrs, so the drawers are cool if your only dedicated to ONE A&A game, but I would want to use this new gaming table for all, so not sure yet what I could do there, I’ll have to think on it :?
I wish I was more computer savvy to be able to enlarge the scan/enlarge the map as you have, but I’m not, & I don’t know of anyone around here to be able to print something like that on Vinyl. I had ordered some A&A maps that, I think, Imperious Leader had printed on Vinyl & 1/4" card stock in a 3x6 for AA50, I think he said I could order one in 4x8 but that they weren’t sure they were gonna print it anymore? It was very cost prohibitive at several hundred dollars anyway–just can’t justify that.
But long & short of it, very, very COOL & good job :mrgreen:
If the ceiling doesnt work for whatever reason you could always hinge it to the wall wih some quick disconnect hinges and have a murial on the underside so it looks like a painting of some sorts. The only drawback is not being to leave a game in play for a week or two until it can be completed. I have mine so it can drop down, unhook and be moved to the center of the basement (near the bar and pisser) We have stools that can be placed under it to allow for sitting and walking around the table for the travelers, (spies) as I call them. This does take up a fair amount of space on the footprint of the basement on the weekends, but the basement is MINE and I dont hear a lot of slack for it. When I was leaving a game set up for extended periods of time however I realized MY basement was still a part of HER house (it is under her area), so I guess that constitutes hers if she chooses to pull that card out.
Please feel free to use any or all of my ideas. Hell that why I posted it. The pulley system is made by RACOR and is available at Lowes or Home Depot online for around 100 or so USD. The drawer idea was so that there was room on the table for drinks or any other things needed during a game. I chose the thick Vynil for vehices so that spills are rendered no problem. Wipe them away and carry on. Additionally I can roll the map up and take it on the road if we are playing at another persons house. They just need a 4x8 sheet of plywood.
Cheers and thanks for the feedback.
@CWO:
I like how your wife hates the board being set up in your basement, but she seems to be ok with you making a contraption on the ceiling that looks like a medieval draw bridge to attract even more attention haha!
And besides, she’d probably take an even dimmer view of the alternative solution, which would be to install a pulley system that would raise your wife’s chair up to the ceiling (with her in it) to make room on gaming nights when you need to set up your A&A map board.
HAHA!!! great point Marc!
I like the whole idea of pulleys and storing it high on the ceiling. Nice job.
