table-sized raised baseplate landscape

[melonkernel]

Traditionally castles came with raised baseplates (is that the right name for it?).
Has anyone had the idea or tried to make a 3d landscape that would cover an entire table with studs at desired places?

[nwinch]

Sorry i thought you meant made out of bricks but i like your idea now i see what you meant.

[melonkernel]

What i am talking about is a custom made raised baseplate the size of a large table with hills, roads and perhaps a river, and studs embedded into the surfaces so you can build castles, drawbridges, villages, forests etc. etc.

where the distances and altitude between areas with studs would be standardised so connecting creations with each other would be possible.

it would either be molded or made of wood with small baseplates glued on (or something) and then perhaps painted.

What i am interrested in is wether anyone have thought of this, or perhaps made a landscape already, and what would be the best way of adding the studs in a standardized manner. What method of making this huge custom item would be best/most convenient, or is the best solutions just to make the landscape and skip the studs all together.

i was thinking something like a mix between the courtyard of the advent calendar and the raised baseplate for 6091, but very large, with landscape variations such as hills, a river, a main road, and a smaller one leading to the river where a drawbridge could be built.
And it would be well colored (like the courtyard of the advent calendar)...
And you could have different type of landscapes (again like the courtyard, but larger and in 3d, with studs at appropriate locations) where different factions could have their HQ

[Tedward]

Traditionally castles came with raised baseplates ...

It's funny how different people see "tradition". When I was a kid LEGO Castles were built on plates and hinged so they could be opened up and played with. To me that is a "traditional" LEGO Castle.

I still see the raised baseplates as a kind of icky modern invention that crept in during my dark ages. That said, strangely I cannot seem to stop collecting these baseplates for other uses.

As for you main point why would you want to build a table like that? It seems much easier to build landscaping with bricks and perhaps those raised baseplates. I really don't see an advantage to making a permanent foundation for terrain unless you are doing a permanent layout like some model railroaders do in their basements. And in that case they mostly start with flat tables and just add things on top like wooden boxes, styrofoam chunks, papier mache on chickern wire etc.

[melonkernel]

Thanks. About the "traditional"; since the latest castle was withot one, and some kk2 too, i just assumed those days are over . Plus I grew up with the Black Knights Castle as my first lego castle, so that is traditional for me ...

Hmm, i don't say i have to build such a thing, but the idea is interesting and if i had more pieces i would of course build all ladscape using bricks only.
Also making it "fit" even though studs would be at different altitudes and distance seems like a nice engineering challenge.

but a painted table/cloth, like a large scale advent-calendar courtyard could also be just as nice. But then I guess it wouldn't be castle customs related and off topic

[Ser Loktar]

I've a friend whom used to be into tabletop gaming (Warhammer and the like) and he went to group meetings as a kid, and anyways since then he's seen my Legoroom and as I had a a rough Brikwars-esque game as a child, we've had many conversations about how to make a 3D battlefield out of my 6' by 4' lego table.
The most plausible solutions we've managed to come up with involved many and all of the usual train and battlefield layout techniques mentioned previously here, (cardboard boxes, foam, wood, etc.) and even Duplo and Megablocks underneath, with baseplate, plate, and brick topping off the contours in the land.
My problem is definitely the willingness (or lack thereof) to pull all my cool stuff apart and use it to make a battlefield, which, although cool, doesn't feel right. That said I do have a small layout with what I'd humbly call impressive combinations of the two hemispheres of modeling, made of my xtras, so I just need access to a digicam (my BS folder hasn't been updated in over a year)
Good Luck with your endeavors and just I hope you've a camera to show off your results,
Ser Loktar