Stealing a table from the Navy SEALs

[Section9]

As the former military guys know, there are all sorts of different training facilities all over the place. Some are nothing more than a rifle range with targets at known distances, others are a rifle range with pop-up targets, and some are full-blown cities made out of tires or even cinder blocks.

This one is a full-blown city (small town, really), custom-made for the SEALs to practice on, parked at the tip of San Clemente Island. (Swiped shamelessly from foxtrotalpha)



It's a mix of cinder block, concrete, and shipping containers. Off to the right of the big town is a small village. What you can't see from the satellite overhear shot is how steep and mountainous that end of the island is.

From the ocean side of the 'city' looking inland:

You see how much the land rises?

Now for some pictures and sketches of what the facilities look like:



The awnings and clotheslines can play havoc with lines of sight.


Down at ground level, 2" gravel 'pavement' for the most part. Apparently, a purple smoke grenade exists, and stained the ground where it was burning. Cue some Jimi Hendrix...


This pic is from the middle of construction, but should give you a good idea about the building sizes. Yep, that big one on the right is 5-6 stories.


This must have been taken from a fisheye camera, look at the distortion around the edges. But it gives you another look at building/window size.


Another set of pictures, I think they're all from inside the big building.


And a pic of the 'mosque'. Not too many windows here.

and now out in the slums:


Market at twilight:


another view of that big 5-6 story 'embassy'/'hotel'/'high-value target hideout':


I'm planning on doing both the city and the small village up in the hills, but we'll see how well that actually works. I don't think both will fit on the same table. In fact, I'd be surprised if I can fit the whole big city onto the table!

I will be taking my time trying to lay this out, if I'm lucky I will be done sometime next year...

[MARC C]

Cool project! Have you selected the material you will use?

[Mob of Blondes]

In this map you can see that (rotated like in the photo you posted, and guessing "brush in the air" style) the slums are around 80*100 meters, while the city is more like 200*175 or a bit less if discarding outside roads. So you can do a "let's trim the edges" for the small complex or focus in subsections of the big one, if going for (my beloved ) 1/50 (typical table = 60*60 meters).

Maybe I should do some map captures and fire up the image editor...

[Section9]

Cool project! Have you selected the material you will use?

Sintra board for the buildings, since I know a place that sells the stuff by the 4x8 sheet.

In this map you can see that (rotated like in the photo you posted, and guessing "brush in the air" style) the slums are around 80*100 meters, while the city is more like 200*175 or a bit less if discarding outside roads. So you can do a "let's trim the edges" for the small complex or focus in subsections of the big one, if going for (my beloved ) 1/50 (typical table = 60*60 meters).

I actually prefer 1/60 scale, but it's still a very small footprint of a bigger city. And I'm probably going to leave the back of the big building open, on the table edge.

Maybe I should do some map captures and fire up the image editor...

I'd love to see what you put together!

[Mob of Blondes]

It was just about less approximate measuring.

[Arachas]

You're going to copy the town literally, or create a modular board?

[Mob of Blondes]

This kind of image:

1 square = 10 metres

You can see many structures are below 5-8 m, so in 1/50 they would be 10-16 cm, with a handful of them slightly bigger. OTOH the paths are wide, so to speak, with 2 cars being able to cross each other (there is an easy to see pickup, an offroad one... and 3 boats? All more or less in the same column of squares). It's not an over packed shanty zone.

The town is 90 * 115 metres, not counting the white square near the bottom (control point?).

[Section9]

You're going to copy the town literally, or create a modular board?

Not sure yet. Might build it for real, but modular is preferable for gameplay/flexibility.

[Arachas]

Of course modular comes in various flavours. I once started a 40k city board in 1" x 1" tiles. I never finished it, too much work.

Then I did a "woodland" table with a river in 4 tiles of 2" x 2". A lot better to handle, but I'm not satisfied about the way the tiles connect (not sleek enough for this perfectionist).

So for my latest board (urban), I'm taking a different approach. I'm using two 2" x 4" boards (4x4 isn't an option for me, with storage and transportation and such) which I've textured with a ton of cardboard hexagon tiles (a lot of scissorwork while watching TV!). The end result is too fairly boring tables, BUT... I'm also building several "platforms", i.e. loose pieces of square high-density foam, also covered in the same hexagon tiles. That'll give me ample options to give some depth to the board, in a completely modulair way: I can build a differently "raised" board every time.

In other words: I'd advise against tiles, but instead I'd opt for a flat surface with modulair terrain elements. Not just the buildings, but also raised areas and perhaps natural elements, such as rocky outcrops.

[dulydude]

I second Arachas' idea, make the buildings/rocky hills/slightly raised road, with a flat surface

[Mob of Blondes]

And the map for the city area:

1 square = 10 metres

The buildings with dark grey roofs are barely above one square, so in 1:50 20-24 cm in longest dimension. The mosque is 2*2.5, so 40*50 cm, and the hotel (the one with black framed skylight) 3*2, so 60*40, or it can be done without the side blocks, just 2*2 squares. Big Infinity buildings, but nothing absurd, they would occupy one tile of a table created with 9 tiles.

The city is 170, or 230 with the two left most complexes, by 170 metres (not counting the big grey block at the top). Nine tables would do in 1:50, compressing nothing, making a perfect copy of reality, but requiring a lot of road filler for games. It could make a thematic tourney for 18 players.

As others suggested already, I would go for a base board (1, 2, 4 parts, as storage allows) or playing mat and then create interesting buildings that can be placed over it, giving you plenty of flexibility to change layouts from game to game. With some creativity and sizing down those big roads (some are 2 squares of dirt) and open areas between some buildings (dark grey buildings have 2.5 * 1.5), you could get a representation of all areas in the same game.

(Maybe the JPEG is a bit overcompressed, had to use setting 25 to get it below 1/4 MB forum limit.)

[Section9]

Mob, thanks so much for gridding that out! Would it be too much trouble if you did that for the village off to the east of the town, too?

Given Bostria's 'official advice' for terrain, I'm actually thinking about 18" squares on a modular table, 9 squares for a 4x4. But I think it will look better if I do a different city (I'm thinking Yu Jing) for the modular table, and make this one with a mat and individual buildings. Shrink the streets a bit, down to 'just big enough for a small car to go each direction' (~4"? depends on how big Antenocitis cars are), and do a bit of shrinking on the buildings, say to 3" = 10m (roughly 1/133 groundscale, or a little less than half 'actual' size).

That 3"=10m groundscale would make for a nice, even 4'x4' table covering an area of 18x18 gridsquares. Where'd I put my graph paper? I want to sketch some things out! Better question, where'd I put my isometric graph paper?

[Guges]

This is going to be epic. Would love to see progress pictures as you go...

[Mob of Blondes]

What village?

[Claudius Sol]

Isn't the village the one he mapped out first?

Either way, this is shaping up to be awesome!

[Mob of Blondes]

The two maps are right and left sides of the zoom on the right, which covers the red ellipse on the left.

[Section9]

Isn't the village the one he mapped out first?

Yeah, he did. I'm a brain donor...

[red harvest]

Instead of the graph paper, may I suggest that you do a full sized mock up with paper cut-outs on a 4'x4'? It really does give a much better sense of how the table will grow, and how it should grow.

At least the Zombies will leave you alone from now on, eh?

[Section9]

Instead of the graph paper, may I suggest that you do a full sized mock up with paper cut-outs on a 4'x4'? It really does give a much better sense of how the table will grow, and how it should grow.

That will happen later on. 3" squares is a bit small, as it makes most of those buildings all of 3"x3" or thereabouts. 4"x4" (MAS Tower size) looks better.

At least the Zombies will leave you alone from now on, eh?

With the zombies we have around here? I'm still packing more brain tissue after donation than they are before zombification...

[Mob of Blondes]

Read again... he says "use a 120 * 120 cm table". Well, your version of that, 4 feet. And paper shapes that are the final size too. Where does he talk about 3 or 4 inches things? And I would add then you can move real miniatures, or at least bases, around the papers, to check everything.

You need new spectacles. Because you are confusing me constantly.

[Section9]

Read again... he says "use a 120 * 120 cm table". Well, your version of that, 4 feet. And paper shapes that are the final size too. Where does he talk about 3 or 4 inches things? And I would add then you can move real miniatures, or at least bases, around the papers, to check everything.

The grid laid over the city 18x18. 48" wide table / 18 gridsquares per side = 3" squares. Most of the small buildings are one grid-square in size, therefore 3" square buildings. (This is roughly half actual size, BTW, so about perfect for 15mm gaming.) But a 3" square building looks funny next to a mini on a 1" base, which is why I may fudge the town buildings to roughly 4" square.

Now, building the village would be do-able closer to true-scale. The village is about 12x12 gridsquares, so one gridsquare should be a 4" square, assuming a 4'x4' table. Still some small houses, but they're only one story instead of ~3 stories like in the town. That feels more like shacks than undersized buildings

[Mob of Blondes]

Makes sense now. In that level. I would compact the roads a bit and try to keep the buildings bigger, to both try to save in scatter and keep it more real.

Without watching the videos, all the visual info from the original article seems to be for the city, not the shanties. The couple of pictures that could be, probably are from the city.

[Nicho]

This looks like it will be very very cool

[Section9]

Makes sense now. In that level. I would compact the roads a bit and try to keep the buildings bigger, to both try to save in scatter and keep it more real.

Can't go much tighter than 3" wide on the roads without needing a 'terrain readjustment phase' after I stick my mitts in there.

Without watching the videos, all the visual info from the original article seems to be for the city, not the shanties. The couple of pictures that could be, probably are from the city.

Yeah, I don't think there are too many pictures of the shanties, either. But there's a lot of footage from Afghanistan on youtube, so I'll just fake the buildings and use the satellite pic for layout.

This looks like it will be very very cool

We'll see if my building skills are up to it.

[Mob of Blondes]

Makes sense now. In that level. I would compact the roads a bit and try to keep the buildings bigger, to both try to save in scatter and keep it more real.

Can't go much tighter than 3" wide on the roads without needing a 'terrain readjustment phase' after I stick my mitts in there.

4 inches would be half square, which are the small and rare cases, many are double or even more (1-1.5 squares).

Maybe time for looking for real towns in the maps, and not training mockups.

[Errhile]

I'm afraid a real town in 1:56 scale wouldn't work well for Infinity. It's just about 67x67 meters of real terrain on the 4x4' table.

[Mob of Blondes]

The "real towns" reference was about checking size of things, not trying to fit a full town in a table.

And while at it, as the attachment size was increased, resaved version with less JPEG artifacts.

[Section9]

@Mobster: thanks for the re-sized pic. I haven't had much time to build lately, and it's annoying me to death.

Found another crazy training setup today. This one is in Jordan, and apparently everyone can play on it. Well, if you have a quarter-million dollars US for a week's training, but the US, Chinese, I think the Russians and Ukrainians have been there, you name it.

It's called KASOTC (King Abdulla II Special Operations Training Center), sounds like "chaotic" with an s in there, "kay-sotic". Oddly appropriate acronym. Apparently King Abdulla II was a special ops soldier back in the day.

Satellite view:



from left to right: village nestled into the hills, a model airport for that kind of training, shooting range, and another town set into the hills.

The place actually hosts an international SpecOps "olympics" called the Warrior Challenge, and here's the trophy:


Look at how small some of these buildings are:


I'm hoping I can get some more pictures of the place for terrain layouts.

[Mob of Blondes]

For future reference https://www.google.com/maps/@32.0334871 ... a=!3m1!1e3 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KASOTC

[Scorch]

Those buildings in Jordan look like a copy-scale-paste from Bandua's terrain! Haha! Awesome!

I know there is a training facility like this in the Netherlands: Marnehuizen.
122 objects among them a railway + trainstation, stores, banks, gas-station, hangars and an underground sewer system. It became so big due to the Yugoslavian war. Government wanted to train the military in urban warfare, before the Dutch were sent out to the Balkan.

Apparently they train there with some high-advanced laser tech.