Tips for making terrain.
The board is 12mm thick MDF board 8ft x 4ft, cut so that the centre board is 3ft wide.
A frame is built on the underside of each board. This prevents the board from sagging over time. Also once you start to apply wet stuff like filler or paint it expands the top surface and accelerates the sagging process, so building a frame is really important and worth taking the extra effort.
The frame allows you to also add some side shelving which helps to keep rulers, dice and cups of coffee off the game table. I used scrabble tile holders for the Command cards.
A frame is built on the underside of each board. This prevents the board from sagging over time. Also once you start to apply wet stuff like filler or paint it expands the top surface and accelerates the sagging process, so building a frame is really important and worth taking the extra effort.
The frame allows you to also add some side shelving which helps to keep rulers, dice and cups of coffee off the game table. I used scrabble tile holders for the Command cards.
The surface texture on the board, and on most of the terrain is achieved with flexible flooring grout, a grey colour cement-like mixture. Spread it on, smooth it our and then stipple it with an old house-brush. The colour is simply a thin wash of a chocolate colour house paint.
smaller terrain pieces start with a hardboard or plastic card base. The shapes are then created by carving expanded polystyrene with a hot-knife (an old kitchen knife heated over the gas cooker) - PVA to glue that down, then coated again with the grout. Rocks are easily done with either bark chips like those you through into the flower bed, and cork bark which you can get from a good pet shop (strange people that keep reptiles use it).
smaller terrain pieces start with a hardboard or plastic card base. The shapes are then created by carving expanded polystyrene with a hot-knife (an old kitchen knife heated over the gas cooker) - PVA to glue that down, then coated again with the grout. Rocks are easily done with either bark chips like those you through into the flower bed, and cork bark which you can get from a good pet shop (strange people that keep reptiles use it).
Sand dunes were made in the same way, with crescent shapes carved from polystyrene and covered with grout, but this time I dusted with sand before painting. The Wadis were made again from polystyrene but this time with cork bark to form the rock face.