Gaming on a Budget- The Joy of Wallpapering

behold- the clutter!

Hey folks, I'm back for my regularly scheduled slot on showing you how to stretch your gaming dollars.  Big thanks to Lauby for putting out a great article last week in my stead.  You should go check it out- it rules.  In spite of a busy couple of weeks*, I've got a great tutorial for you that should blow a few minds with its simplicity, savings, and some other word beginning with S to keep this alliteration alive (snark?).

This is how I roll

Today's Tutorial sees me heading over to my super cluttered bits shelf (well this shelf actually only contains a little over half of my spare parts and un-built stuff- I am nothing if not a pack rat) to see what I can cook up.  Somewhere in that mess you can see a roll of wallpaper nestled between some gigantic chunks of foam.  That's what we're after today- a simple roll of textured wallpaper purchased for about $6 at the local hardware store.

Textured wall paper is great since it's, you know, textured.  Last seen in your grandmother's bathroom circa 1970, it comes in a variety of styles and sizes.  A few minutes at the store will allow you to find just the type you need.  If you haven't ever worked with this stuff before, it is all about saving money when it comes to basing, gaming tables, and terrain projects.  Anybody who has ever priced out trying to purchase stones/tile in any pre-made form in quantity has probably been horrified by the price.  Bases can easily run $1 or more each and the price for sheets of molded plastic is astronomical.  With my $6 worth of cheap wallpaper, I have enough cobblestones to do several armies and game boards and terrain projects, with little fear of ever running out (lost the wrapper, so have no idea how many square feet of this shit I really have, but I'm pretty sure it stretches roughly to the moon and back with enough left over to do my bathroom and a Tomb Kings army). 

closeup for texture

The more adventurous among you may have considered using green stuff (expensive!) or filler/plaster to sculpt your own stone bases.  Good on you if you can do it, but that is a time consuming process and involves working with some materials that are notoriously finicky to deal with.  With my wallpaper method, your project will be done in minutes, rather than hours, saving you precious time as well as money.  And hell, we all know that time is money.

Though there are countless applications for wallpaper, I'm just going to run through two with you guys today- making a game board and basing your minis.

the board

Making a Game Board

This one is more of a show and tell, as I made this board with Hoagy 4 or 5 years ago in my old apartment in the days before I had my own sex dungeon gaming basement. 

For the board itself, I cut 2'x2' sections of 2" blue foam.  This stuff is sturdy and allows you to sculpt features like trenches and rivers into the board.  Push 4 sections together and you've got a Warmachine table.  Go for 6 and you're ready for Warhammer or 40k. 

This board section comes from my desert collection, designed to go with my no longer played Menoth army.  I have a stack of buildings that were never finished to go over this section, as it was meant to represent a town.  As you can see from the pic, with just a few pieces of terrain on it, it really does look like a paved area.

The most action my DA have seen in a while

To make this all I did was measure and cut a single piece of wallpaper to fit over the board and glue it on with white glue and the glue backing already the paper.  Most wallpaper has a glue back on it already that is simply activated with water, but after a test run, I decided that it wasn't bonding to the foam surface too well, so added some extra glue for good measure.  If I were doing this again today, I'd work on that seam where the wallpaper ends.  All it would take is some tapered filler to blend it into the desert. 

In this case I didn't do much more other than a quick drybrushing of yellow to tie it in with the desert beyond and to take the sheen off of the wallpaper.  As you'll see in the next section, though, this paper takes paint quite well, so you can feel free to style it as you see fit.

It's hip to be square

Basing

Basing your miniatures is so simple that it almost hurts using this method. 

While you could cut out shapes from your wallpaper to fit the bases, I've found that cutting out a small square and trimming it later works easiest.  To begin cut out a square of material slightly larger than your intended base.

now I wanna sniff some glue

Apply some white glue or super glue to the surface of your base.  You could try to use the glue backing on the wallpaper but I, again, found it somewhat lacking in its ability to bond to the base.  This may be more of a symptom of being stored in a slightly humid basement for 3 years than a property of the glue itself, though.

Next thing is just a matter of sticking the bases glue side down (no- Glue side up damn you to hell!) onto the paper.

I'm sticking with you

weight a minute

To get an even finished product I put some weight over this while it was drying.  Since I was only doing 2 test bases (possibly for a future army...), I went ahead and just used some amber dropper bottles for this.  If I were in full on army production mode, however, I'd be doing a big ass batch of these and would need something much larger to weigh them down.  I think a sheet pan with some rocks or bricks on it would do the trick.  If nothing else at least I'd be able to make some killer paninis or worship at the altar of pork and grill up some Cuban sandwiches afterwards.

trimming the fat

Once dry, I trimmed the excess wallpaper away with a hobby knife.  Be careful no to cut into the base as you're doing this- it's quite easy to do. 

That's it!  You could really stop there if you were feeling lazy, but I went ahead and painted them.  In search of 2 distinct looks, I painted one up like a traditional European style cobblestone road while the other is made to emulate a dusty desert street.

prior to painting

gray stones

Both started out with a black basecoat.  To do the gray stones, I drybrushed on layers of codex gray, fortress gray, and skull white.  I then finished this off with some basing grit (painted scorched brown and drybrushed with bleached bone) and a bit of dead static grass to give this an aged feel.

brown stones

For the desert stones, I started with a dark brown and drybrushed it up through tan to yellow and finally to bleached bone.  I then washed it with Gryphonne Sepia to tone down the highlights.  Since I nicked the edge of the wallpaper a little bit early on in the trimming process, I grabbed some Vallejo pumice to cover this up.  After painting it tan/yellow I drybrushed it with bleached bone.  This could either be a broken stone turned to dust or signs of the desert encroaching on the city. 

That's it.  How cheap and easy was that?

Using wallpaper yourself?  Got a tip?  Drop a comment below.  Have an idea for a future installment in the gaming on a budget series?  Drop us an e-mail at info@houseofpaincakes.com.


==============================================================
*Things that have happened to dethtron over the last 2 weeks:

• Found a stray Maltese-Poodle mix after blowing way too much money at a closing Borders store and getting delicious Tacos.  Chased him for something like a half mile before I could get the bastard.  While waiting to see if anybody would claim him (no tags, no chip) we referred to him as little buddy- nobody claimed him.  As you can see he (now named Oliver) and my other dog, Loki are clearly not only BFFs forever, but also the manliest dogs ever.
• Fervently working on my Late War German army for FoW.  Made good progress- it's almost time to whip out my airbrush.
• School stuff- boring, but necessary.  MBA now almost in my hands.
• Work stuff- doing a sustainability assessment for a local school district.  I've become sick of power point.
• oh, and also I went to Adepticon and somehow failed to take a single picture.  Not sure how that happened, as I had a camera and my phone with me, but sometimes that's just how I roll.  For day 2 I did get unexpectedly semi-drunk when some random due basically forced me at bolter point to do a "shot" of Jameson on an empty stomach.  By "shot" he apparently meant half of a tumbler full of whiskey.  Took it like a champ and didn't wake up with a sore b-hole, so I'm assuming it was legit.  Watch my blog for further ramblings about my Adepticon experience later today.

don't let their handsomeness fool you, they have deadly laser eyes