32 sq ft AA50th Table

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?

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!

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.

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.