"My Combat Zone modular tunnel/sewers concept" Topic

The "Combat Zone Goes Under" article last week prompted a thought in my head. Since most sewers are made using round concrete pipe, I decided that it might be fairly straightforward to create a modular board using pieces of PVC pipe. Here's what I came up with.

I bought a 2' long piece of 2" wide ABS pipe (which is thicker and heavier than PVC). Since 2" is roughly 50mm, I figured that would give plenty of room for heroic-scale figs to fit inside. I used my skill saw to cut a slot down the length of the pipe (I didn't try to measure and mark it; instead, I just ran a piece of duct tape from one end to the other and cut along the edges), then cut individual lengths in my miter box.

Each piece would now get some flooring, in the form of plastic cross-stitch canvas, which is dirt cheap at Michaels and most fabric stores. One tunnel section received a 1.5" wide piece of flooring and was itself 4.5" long, representing three 1.5" square spaces. The other got a 1" wide piece and was 3" long, representing three 1" square spaces. The tunnel with the 1.5" flooring has a piece of 1/2" thick molding under the flooring to support it.

Here's the section with 1.5" flooring, first with a 28mm Cadian trooper and then with a 15mm New Israeli squaring off with a 15mm QRF alien:

picture

picture

Plenty of room for the 15mm figs, but I feel like the 28mm fig is way too high, almost ruining the close-in tunnel effect. So here's the second tunnel piece with 1" flooring:

picture

picture

I think this works better, even if your 40mm-based Terminators wouldn't be able to fit on the smaller flooring. You could still use the Space Hulk rules with regular Marines on the 1" flooring, and have room for your Genestealers to be waving their crazy arms.

The tunnel pieces are kept from rolling around by short pieces of corner molding glued to form a base. I glued the ones on the 1.5" tunnel slightly cockeyed, which is why one side of the tunnel is slightly higher than the other.

My next experiment will be with using the T's, elbows, and four-way junctions at Home Depot to see how easily those can be converted. Then I'll tackle the idea of rooms/chambers. Still, this is a pretty cheap project — total cost of the above was about $3. USD You could create a whole set of Space Hulk pieces for less than the price of the original game, most likely. Festoon it with wires and greeblies, and it could be the underbelly of a hulk.

Thanks,
jav98

Great pics and explanation. I love the idea. Let us know how the t's and elbows work.

Being as I have a table saw and a miter saw, I should give this a try too. I'd probably try to cut 45 degree angles on the tubes on the miter saw after removing the top pieces. I'd then join them at right angles. Another thing could be to drill holes in the floor under the walkways and screw the pipe hallways into a flat base so they can be lined up in sections that mate up evenly.

damn it – cannot see pics from photobucket or the like at work :-( I'll take a look from home.

Way cool – looking forward to seeing Ts & such – adding ladders will be easy too!

Very nice!

Nice idea, plenty of possibilities.

That's just brilliantly simple! I should have thought of that :)

Guess my mind must be too highly trained ;-)

Jeremey
germy.co.uk

alien surfer – I have the same problem. They blocked all photo sites a few weeks ago here under the heading of "Personal Network Backup and Storage". ?? I hate Them so much sometimes.

Very nice work Javelin. And it seems easy too.

The top pieces could be used for hidden deployment.
Also it should be fairly easy to make multi level sewers and/or platforms on top.
hmm I see a new project emerging.

Actually you could use the cut out top section as a base for the tube tunnel to stop it rolling?

Jeremey
germy.co.uk

Have you tried 3" and cutting it in half? You'd be able to do the 1 1/2" sections of flooring, I would think quite easily and the bigger based dudes would fit just fine.

Otherwise, neat idea. We have scads of 2" PVC lying around our warehouse with no home … I might need to liberate it considering we no longer carry the product line that stuff supported.

And I have tons of genestealers and Grenadier/eM4 Future Warriors Tac Troopers.

Curse you. I didn't need another project.

Very nice!
I had a friend who made a board like that many moons ago… though I can't remember him ever playing space hulk on it.
We used it for a variety of spaceship boarding actions… and I think once for some Necromunda sewer fandangos…

That looks very nive Jav98.

How did you cut the pipeż

See you in space cowboy.

For those of you who are Photobucketly-challenged, I uploaded the pics to my Freewebs account:

28mm mini standing on 1" flooring: picture

15mm minis standing on 1" flooring: picture

28mm mini standing on 1.5" flooring: picture

15mm minis standing on 1.5" flooring: picture

I like Goldwyrm's idea of screwing the sections to a base; my way of stabilizing them was an expedient measure and isn't particularly attractive to look at. I toyed with Germy's idea about using the discarded top piece, but the edges of the top piece weren't perfectly straight and the sections would probably have wobbled a bit.

Now I just have to figure out what kind of greeblies you'd find in a sewer. Conduits, moss, garbage in the corners… all sorts of ideas, there.

@SpaceCowboy:

I used a skill saw to cut the top, and a miter saw to cut each individual section.

If you explained this already and I missed it I appologize. What kind of glue did you use…. I have tried (with PVC) using the pipes before and had real problems making things stick to them.

I used hot glue, actually. I'm usually a super-glue-gel guy, but the hot glue was more convenient and seems to have held pretty well.

Very interesting. How do you keep track of the figures in a tunnel system if you have to look directly down on them? Does anyone do clear plastic pipe?

Ive got some 4" pipe at home and I was wondering about the possibility of doing something similar to it to create an aircraft fusulage foe hostage rescue scenarios. Your pictures mean I'm definately going to have to try it, thanks.

Robert

How do you keep track of the figures in a tunnel system if you have to look directly down on them?

I'm not sure if it would be all that big of a problem. If a player is tracking his squads properly, he should know if he missed somebody. And the slot on the top isn't so narrow as to completely obscure vision from anything but direct top-down view; I think you can pretty well see into the thing from the angle you'd be at if you were standing at the edge of the table. I can experiment with that tonight when I get home from work and see how it looks.

Great idea!

What a terrific idea, trely inspired! Thanks for the detailed write-up and photos. Love the concept, and I can now easily see multi-levels, with plastic canvas ladders connecting them too.

Personally, I'd go with the larger pipe (2.5" or 3") and 1.5" grating, so a wider selection of minis could fit in the pipes.

As for greeblies, yes, wires run near the top, an occasional wire running down lower into an access box, a few bulkhead archways, maybe a single pipe (thinking soda straws here) running along the edge of the grate, with one of those turny handles sticking out every so often. Possibly some floodlights too.

I wonder if there are cheaper plastic pipes that are easier to cut? I'm remembering a corrigated plastic/bendable pipe that is used for french drains and sewer leech lines. But those may be too big.

I say disolve the UN. Worthless bunch of do-nothings except spend money. They have been worthless at resolving real international disputes. Resolutions that mean nothing, worthless rhetoric, spend money but resolve nothing. Time to start over, this experiment failed worse than the League of Nations.

Whoa! That wasn't my post! Bug alert! Bugs in the south passage!!

What I wrote was:

I wonder if there are cheaper plastic pipes that are easier to cut?

PVC is cheaper and easier to cut than the ABS pipe I used. I paid something like $2.50 USD for 2 feet of ABS, but 2" diameter PVC is something like $7 USD for 8 or 12 feet or some such. Pretty darn cheap, really, especially considering how much you could make out of that much pipe.

That _is_ a nice idea!

What an excellent idea!

I'm going to try it this weekend.

Thanks for sharing :o)

Brillant idea.

My issue with the pipe is cutting it. If it's something much thinner (that can be sliced by a sturdy razorblade) I could play with this idea.

But all of my power tools are buried in the back of 20' of storage space, under a mountain of other boxes. Can't justify going out and buying another saw either.

That's what got me thinking about other types of plastic pipe. I'm going to prowl around in my local Ace hardware store tomorrow just to check out what they have.

If you really need a thinner pipe, consider something like plastic packing tube. There's a TAP Plastics shop in your area, SeattleGamer — used to be down at the south tip of Lake Union, just down the street from Hooters. They have thin-walled plastic tubing meant for flourescent lamps that should be easily cut with a sharp utiliy knife. Home Depot might have those as well.

Nice!

I didn't know you could cut PVC with a skill saw. This idea works very well. I've been kicking around an idea for years about making a London tube station, and PVC is the way to go. I have lots of books on the underground, but I couldn't figure how to effectively replicate the curved walls on the platforms. Thanks for the idea!

I'm actually thinking about using Pringles cardboard tubes for this. Of course this means I will have to buy lots of Pringles and then be forced to eat them but I think I can manage that. :)

Great idea, thanks for the pics!

Got me to thinking (just brainstorming here)…maybe for doors, you could use plastic mesh circles with the bottoms cut flat to match the floor grate level. Then glue a thin plastic card cut to diameter on each side (with a circle cutter) of the plastic mesh circle to thicken it enough to make it stiff. Finally, finish off the door on each side with bits to make it look like a bulkhead door and paint. Whaddya think?

:?)

Javelin,

All day yesterday I could not get your photos out of my mind. I absolutely have to try something like it.

Thanks for the inspiration!

CC

Very nice ideas here. Another idea, for tunnels of a different shape – here in the Uk, you can get square section downspouting tube – with all sorts of angles, joints and stuff. If you cut one side off that, you could make tunnels/passages from that too.

For smaller scale figs, has anyone considered the use of cardboard toliet paper and gift wrap tubes for the same purpose? Even cheaper…

Thats a really clever idea youve put into effect there Javelin!Like the use of the granny grating.

Boy, that looks really good. Could easily be corridors in a scifi space habitat, too. One of the old Traveller adventures had an alien base where all the corridors were essentially similar to that design, albeit with floating walkways.

Got to add some chocks to keep the darn things from rolling over during play, though. :)

Rich

I checked out Ace and didn[t find anything else that would work reasonable well.

However, I was thinking about those cardboard mailing tubes I've seen in 2-3 foot lengths at office supply stores (for mailing posters and maps and such – they come in a variety of diameters).

The Pringles cans though sound like they may work too. I'll have to get a "sample" can and see if the diameter is sufficient. Thanks for that tip BugStomper.

And I agree with CC . . . I couldn't get those images out of my head. What a cool idea!

So now I have two trips to make, one to the grocery store, and another to an office supply store.

I'll also have to look into the TAP Plastic stuff you mentioned javelin. What sort of diameter are we talking about?

Cardboard mailing tubes in 3" x 36" x 4 for about $8.50 USD

link

Works out to just over $2.10 USD each, or about .70 per foot. I'll bet one of those nice sharp utility knives would work on these, and having 1' sections for only .70 appeals to me. Now to get my hands on one of these and see jsut how easy they are to cut.

Been thinking about this idea and how to apply it to starship corridors. As I don't know what a skill saw is, I wondered if this
link
would make a less labour-intensive alternative? I'm imagining a bunch of Imperial Stormtroopers being chased by a smuggler…

In fact, if you go to this link, it shows all the wonderful corners and angles for the white guttering, including dead ends, etc.

link

Get a couple of lengths of the guttering, cut into different sized lengths, some corners and dead ends and you've got yourself a cheap, modular, clip-together tunnel system!

Must resist…

Hey CC … a Skil Saw is a brand (Skil) name for a circular saw (they usually have a round 7-8" diameter toothed spinning blade of death and a place to grip it with both hands. It requires a workbench area where you can bolt the item to be cut down, so it won't move (since both of your hands are using the saw.

A Miter Saw is basically like that, only it comes with a base and a hingeed area, so you only need one hand to press down and lift the saw (chopping motion) so the other hand is free to hold/guide the item being cut.

The plastic raingutters would work fine. I have seen on the net a spacehulk set-up using those. The beveled edges looked pretty cool too (not the standard 90 degree angled walls). What I remember the "issue" was that the gutters are 4" wide, and this guy was trying to do space hulk for 28mm figs. Well, most corridors are only wide enough for one figure at that scale, and a 4" wide piece meant it had 3" or a bit more across along the bottem before the bevel out, thus it was a corridor 3" or so wide.

The cool part was though, that those connectors you show above essentially snap on the ends, and the base of the gutter is flat. So you can make all sorts of pieces, then snap those end connectors on and make a layout. So he used them for shipboard sci-fi battles, but not for space hulk itself.

That's basically what I was thinking. The bevelled edges make it look like sci-fi ship corridors…and it comes in three different colours. Black for the Empire, white for the Rebels and brown for the…er…

If you look at the first link I posted, which shows the three colours, then click on the brown and browse, it shows them the other way up…imagine them upside down on a 'martian' board and you've got yourself the tunnels of a mars base/habitat. Cool or what!!

Sorry, I guess what I call a "skill saw" is actually a jigsaw:

link

On those gutters — that's great! I was looking into using gutters to do a Space Hulk board about three years ago, but the only thing I could find at Home Despot or Lowes were gutters that weren't symmetrical, or had weird ribbing along the sides that would have made them just look terrible. I wish I could find that Eiger stuff in the US.

I know that somebody makes and sells smooth-sided plastic raingutters here in the us, because I installed them on my last house (have since sold and moved away, or I'd go look for a sticker on them right now). And the type I used did indeed have that 45 degree beveled lower edge.

If anyone wants to add a finishing touch to their foamboard corridors:

TMP link

CC

Check out these tunnels:

link

CC

You can buy jigsaws for $15 USD at Walmart.