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 with out turning the house upside down led me to 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 i can use the set as a the insides of a bunker as well as a ship
• gun section. facing out wards with removable gun batteries

These tiles will need converting and predominantly be from the cheaper plain tiles.

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.

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 will be painting the floors in a white or black marble effect. With the tiles being made and textured as they are, I will have to find a levelling agent, that I can apply, so the tile floor is flat.

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 the 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 to light, and are easily bumped out of place. Some how making them anti slip and weigh a little more is certainly on the cards.

I intend to have this project completed by winter ready for the cold dark nights.

The story continues…

Winter has been and gone now. so I have offered the set to be used in a 30k narrative weekend in November, time to crack on, as it is now October.

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. At the end of all this I have ended up with a spare tile…guess its to help me in the future, as with out doubt this set will grow again, when what’s in front of me is complete.

Marbled floor.

This is the exact process that I followed to paint the marbled floor of the tiles. Its very time consuming but the end effect is fantastic and very hard wearing. Even though I try to roll dice in a felt box to avoid chipping the tiles.

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.

Painting.

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 my home mix airbrush thinner. The process takes two thin coats, waiting for the previous coat to be completely dry. The whole board so far has taken 75ml of this paint.

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.

Over this, 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 the 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.

Time.

The long process of adding the metal details now starts. A zone Mortalis tile is full of detail.

This is done by brush work. It takes some time to block colour all these details, being as careful as possible, to avoid touching up.