This is a personal project.

I got bought a set of zone mortalis tiles a couple of years ago as a gift for my birthday from my kids (Bless them). As my house is a crazy place most of the time, a table that can be stored and built fast without turning the house upside down led me to appreciate this system. So a collection of parts and ideas flooded in. As this is a personal project the time limit was not a issue.

Zone Mortalis Tiles I want to include, and why.

Hanger bay. Because the rule of cool is a thing
Elevator. Other games at my local club can lead into games in the house.
Engine room. Key objective in ship boarding actions
Command bridge. as above
Damaged walls, rule of cool and creates a narrative.
1 tile of a bunker network will be included so it can used as a portculis allowing narrative games, set as the insides of a bunker as well as a ship
Gun section. facing out wards with removable gun batteries. Rule of cool.

As well as these zone mortalis tiles scatter terrain and other removable items i will be adding include.

Bulk head doors.
Crates of ship stores inc fuel, munitions for extra boom or cover.
Automated defences for the missions that allow
Barricades for the mission that allow
Objectives
Blips both friend and foe. These add a great dynamic to the game, as you don’t know who or what is around that corner.

Zone Mortalis tiles.

The Forge World tiles themselves are made from a plastic resin. From the underside it looks like a Fibber glass like material. There are only 8 tiles available. Forge World sell some pretty neat scatter too. Scribe stations, Specimen tanks and Blast doors. These all fit nicely in the 1 foot square tile wall sections and Corridor gaps. The scatter is highly detailed as all Forge World products are, but the tiles themselves are a bit of a hit or miss, a few have incomplete casting around the pipes, and what looks like bubbles on the walls. These can be easily hidden with in the painting process as battle damage.

The floor itself I find to not have any casting mishaps at all. The squares on the floor are 2 inch, with 4 inch being the standard movement during the game, it is a sneaky tell (as no pressuring is allowed during the game).

I have been collecting bits and pieces for this project for a while (2-3 year now) and a substantial haul has been accrued . All the ideas and processes, have been mulled over repeatedly, and its time to start the project.

I wanted the floors to be in a white or black marble effect. With the tiles being made and textured as they are, sadly this effect is unavailable. It would take a lot of effort to get a smooth enough texture on the floors to pull this effect off. Although it could be an idea for a specific tile but certainly not the full set as I was wanting.

Protecting the complete tiles when finished is a priority, so I will protect them with extra layers of gloss varnish and matt varnish, to prevent the heavy wear and tear of the ground surface.

With the amount of work involved to paint a 4×4 table itself, before adding the conversions, a lot of thought will be needed before starting this monster.

The tiles also need to be heavier somehow, they are to me, far too light, and are easily bumped out of place. Somehow making them anti slip and weigh a little more is something to think about a little deeper.

The story continues…

I have offered the set to be used in a 30k narrative weekend in November run by the warzone heresy crew, time to crack on, as it is now October. With a date now here for completion it pushes me to finish the project.

Collecting bits for this project, I have managed to get some awesome stuff for the board, including the Servitor controls from the interior of the Reaver Titan, bits for the engine room, titan grade weapons, all the stuff forge world makes for the set including the specimen tanks, 2 sets of the blast doors, and the remaining tiles. Forge world even added an extra tile to the pile for a packing problem due to the wrong tile being sent in one of the zm sets (This could be a marketing strategy as I will obviously now require 3 more to complete the row).

Storage.

The tiles are vast chunks of plastic, a way to transport the whole thing is needed. The set doesn’t weigh a lot, but the bulkiness of it is problematic in itself. This is the main disadvantage to the set.

Painting the floors.

As with all FW products a heavy wash is required to remove any release agent. Waiting until my wife was not home, this was done ion the bath tub. I used cans of car primer to get the first layer on the tiles. This created a good layer for the first coat. Sealing all the plastic and adding a good surface for the later paint to stick too.

Next I used Vallejo model colour deck tan (70.986) for the floors. I started with the floors as they will be far easier to mask up than the walls. This paint was thinned down with airbrush thinner. The process takes two thin coats, waiting for the previous coat to be completely dry.

After the base layer is dry, a coat of watered down sepia wash (25-75) was airbrushed over the floor sections. Doing this by airbrush lets the sepia act more of a glaze, changing the end colour slightly.

Deck tan was then reapplied aiming at the central areas of each of the panels. this brings back the original colour, and has a natural blend when fully dry.

Chevrons.

To break up the floor area I add chevrons to the blank tiles. The large footprint of these tiles allow for a simple masking tape method.

After getting masked up with low tack masking tape, I sketch the edges of each panel with orange fire (72.008). This acts as a pre shade, and after applying a full coat of yellow (71.078) the stage is complete.

Leaving to fully dry, I then add masking to create the chevron pattern.

Black is then applied, with a sketch after wards of heavy charcoal (72.155) at the edges of each panel.

When the masking tape is removed the chevrons are complete at this stage.

This same process was also used for the bulk head doors.

Painting the walls.

After masking up the floor with tin foil and masking tape, the walls were layered with French Blue (71.088) with the airbrush. A couple of coats were required aiming for a zephinal highlight. once applied the details were picked out using block colour keeping to the flat spectrum of Vallejo. The metal areas took a lot of work with detail from the floors and walls containing a lot of area I wanted metal.

Weathering.

Being a big fan of the grim dark aesthetic, weathering was a big part of my vision. Loving the use of oils and pigments, I planned to go to town on this project with them. Due to time constraints with the event happening relatively soon, I decided to focus on the oil washes, wishing to return to the project in the future to add the rust effects. Using a reductive process, a mix of burnt umber and lamp black oil paint (30/70) was liberally applied across the entire board. After a fair few boxes of cotton buds the desired effect was achieved.

Blood effects were an idea I wanted to include, but after trialing a single spot, I did not like the effect and decided to leave the idea as an idea.

The night before the event was a long one as I finished the tiles to the same standard across the project. The oil was the final touch, with the tile containing lamps along the walls it felt rude not to include this effect.

On the day of the event a final coat of varnish was done at the venue, and was then handed over to be used the first time by the Scottish heresy community,

It remained at venue for the heresy crowd to use when they pleased for a year.

With the project now remaining in a box for a few years, a house move, and time have not seen it used much, but writing this blog has inspired me to return to the project to finish it off, adding the missing rust, streaking and finally getting a few games on it in the new location.

During this long project games workshop release Necromunda, this game included ZM tiles and wall sections that are more storage friendly, but tbf, the original forge world tiles, although very roughly detailed, are still a fantastic table to own.

If you haven’t played zone mortals in the Horus heresy, you are missing out, and I strongly advise you give this game a shot.