"What do you make your movement trays out of?" Topic

I will soon be fielding five different Warhammer armies. I have quite a few of GW's movement tray kits which will take care of most of the units I have.

However I will still need to make some additional ones, particularly for things like the dwarf thunderers and quarrelers who will be in ranks of two most of the time, so I need to make some trays with a wide frontage for eight or ten figures in a rank and two ranks in depth.

What are the best materials to make movement trays out of? I'm wondering if I should be obsessed with making a "lip" for them as the commercial ones have. Do you make yours with a lip or do you just use something flat and place the minis on top?

Thin plywood and plasticard are the obvious materials that come to mind, but would ordinary corrugated cardboard be feasible?

If the GW movement tray kit is still available, that is just the thing. Flat styrene gridded for scoring with a sprue of edge and corner rails that fit perfectly and it all goes together with styrene cement.

When I didn't use that, I would make movement trays out of sheet styrene plus either beveled or L-shaped strip styrene (plasticard). It really works the best and it's a great material to work with: you can score and snap a straight line, it welds with styrene cement, and you can fill, sand, and paint it. Also it's the same material as the GW movement trays (old plus new kit) so you can mix and match pieces.

In fact I made many trays by cutting down the old style GW trays then attaching to pieces cut from other trays or from raw styrene.

I used to make my own using the GW plastic kits but recently I have bought quite a lot of laser cut MDF trays from Warbases. These are very cheap and the service is excellent. I have found that they are much cheaper than making your own.
Look at movement trays here-
war-bases.co.uk

Litko offer a similar service in the USA but are more expensive as they use high quality plywood. From past experience Litko are very good.

Placemats:

Buy them at garage sales, spray them black & cut a thumb hole in one corner.

I go very low tech/cost with my movement trays. I use foam-core for the base and some colored craft skinny sticks I bought at Wal-Mart for about 2 dollars for the lip of the tray. A little paint, a little flocking, and some glue and you can make a ton of movement trays for under $20. USD

Dave

Self Adhesive Vinyl floor tiles.

Sheet magnet, since I use thin sheet metal bases.

Doug

The thin plywood plaques that are sold in bags of 6 in Walmart or craft stores.
Glue a lip of balsa or basswood strips to the edges.

I make mine out of something you already have in your possession… plastic sprues!

They are strong, have a trapezoid cross-section which looks good IMO, and (did I mention that) you already have lots of them!

Because of their strength you don't really need a thick base for them; I use 1mm PVC foam card.

What I do is I line my figures in their formation onto a PVC foam card, then I glue strips of sprues against the edges of the formation with white glue. Small gaps are OK because you can disguise them with scatter material or flock later. Once dry remove the figures, trim along the edges of the sprues, then apply texturing to taste.

Here's one I made earlier…

Sheet plastic with L-shaped plastic lip around it. Fairly inexpensive, easy to make, and not subject to the capricious dictates of what GW will produce.

Damon.

I, too, use vinyl peel-n-stick floor tiles: $0.39 USD per square foot. I cut to the size needed, cut some craft foam to match, then peel the paper, and glue the foam in place using the tile's adhesive. If necessary, I paint the foam. If a lip is desired, it can be made with a thin strip of foam, or balsa wood. Cheers!

Vinyl floor tiles, balsa & bass wood.

Clear plastic Petri dishes for my 15mm Zulus, Ansar and Arabs. I spray paint them a suitable color then glue some flock on the inside. I play a modified The Sword and the Flame and 20 native infantry or 12 native cavalry/camelry fits easily in a dish. For the Imperial forces I use GaleForce 9 balsa wood movement trays of varying size for infantry and cavalry.

I just completed my first movement tray for a French 9-company infantry battalion in line formation. The local Michael's arts & crafts store has Revell basswood in sheets and sticks of various sizes. I'm sure the Revell wood is available at other hobby stores, too.

revell.com/wood

I know the post says "make" but for the small price, flanged metal movement trays from Shogun Miniatures really surpass anything I have tried to make myself. Plus Robert the owner is a real stand up guy.

Thanks for all the great options guys, much appreciated! This takes a lot off my mind as I was stumped at how to make these – I know that sounds a bit daft since I've already used the exact same materials to build the masses of terrain I have. But sometimes your brain just doesn't connect, lol.

Thanks again!

Clear Plastic Plates