New Jungle Table for Infinity

As we play through Infinity's Campaign: Paradiso, I realized that a jungle-themed table would be just the ticket for setting the mood.

I wanted to keep things simple, easy and quick to do. Therefore, I opted for a similar attack to my urban board, where I would spray the board an appropriately-colored speckled spray, rather than trying to get fancy. I'd spray all the terrain bases the same way so it all matched and blended. And rather than make plants that I would then have to paint, I opted to go with pre-colored aquarium plants to do the work for me.

I started by acquiring a variety of aquarium plants from PetSmart, WalMart, and Hobby Lobby (may have been Michael's - any large craft store). I also found a pretty cool jungle-ruins-statue-idol that I won't even have to repaint...

I went for a lot of unusual colors as well - oranges, purples, reds - to make the jungle more variegated and seem more "alien."

Using the plant sizes as a guide, I planned out all the MDF bases for them. I made bases for individual plants, Rows of foliage like a wall, bunches or groups of plants, and also some larger amebic shapes to use as bases in case we wanted some "Area Terrain*."

After cutting out all the pieces on a scroll saw (mine's made by Dremel), I then used a small powered hand-sander to bevel and round off all the edges. I used a heavy gardening glove to hold the bases as I attacked them with the sander, to protect my fingers.

I used a hot glue and/or super glue to attach the plants to the bases.

I wrapped all the plants in plastic wrap before spraying their bases down with the same textured, speckled, forest green spray I used for the table top. This, however, sometimes made a very sharp, unnatural straight line through the plant, so in the future I will simply spray carefully along the base - any overspray onto the terrain itself will become gradual and more natural-looking.

Using pre-colored aquarium terrain, most of which has highlights and shadows already built in, I saved a lot of painting time. And while simply using textured spray paint may not be the "fanciest" solution, it is very fast, effective, and inexpensive. All this work got done in a single Saturday afternoon.

Now that all the foliage is done, time to work on some (old, abandoned, overgrown) buildings.


*There are no rules for area terrain in 2nd Edition Infinity, so you would have to use house rules. Also, the "area" terrain can, by joint agreement, represent areas of "Hostile Terrain" as described in the Campaign: Paradiso rulebook.