Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Gameboard progress

Forget hearing the lamentations of your enemies women... now this is happiness.




Early Citadel Fantasy Adventurers FA19 female warrior tackles
a swarm of converted Citadel FF Red Orcs.


 
This morning I finished flocking and filling the first peice of my modular game board and had a bit of a game on it at lunch time.  I have never had a proper board before, and though I suspected it would make a huge difference having some top notch scenery to the verisimilitude (yeah I had to look it up) of the game, I am having trouble shifting the resulting grin from my chops.  It makes every difference!

So my cunning plan was to make small 4 boards rigid enough to lift up and shift about.  My flats small, and storage is limited, so having to pack down my game everytime I needed to eat got quite annoying.  Now I can go crazy, crazy on a campaign and simply lift the peices, dice, figures and all out of the way when space is needed.  The boards stack vertically, and the scenery fits into 2 storage tubs.

Blank game board, work in progress.
So I started with a sheet of MDF which I cut down to a portable size that had enough room to have a major feature on it and at least four tactical situations.  Plenty of flat room for modules to sit on (I use old cd's) too.  I am going to make chocks that clip to the side so all four peices can be stacked in the back of a car if needed.  Finally, a series of magets are countersunk to allow the board to snap and hold together.
Somewhere the teas getting cold.
Citadel Chaos Champion.  Reaper Lorna The Huntress.  Twinings Irish Breakfast.

The flock and static grass is held on with watered down PVA.  Once dry, I sprayed matt sealer initially from a height, so it wouldn't blow away the bits.  After a minute or two I lowered down the height of the aerosol and by the third pass I could put it a few inches away.  Cheap hair spray also works I am told.  I will try that on the next one.  Anyway, the fixative keeps all that scatter firmly in place.

I am yet to paint it properly, plus I need to put in flowers, mushrooms, animal burrows, roots and puddles yet... I want a really temperate, wet, damp environment.

Anyway, here are some shots of the game taken on my crappy iphone camera.

Ral Partha 'Harryhausen' Cyclops, Citadel barbarian,
Citadel Chaos Champions, Mike Broadbent Matakishi Cat (converted)

This shot shows the stone boards I created earlier in this blog... its in something like 'how to make indestructible scenery from expanded polystyrene'.  The effect looks really stoney right?  Thats Woodflex polyfilla stippled with sponge.  Brilliant stuff- great for mud, lava, stone and rock.

The battle for lunchtime rages on.  Using Skulldred beta 3.0 rules.


Kates Amazons rush to their doom for the first time.

Tonight Kate and I had a quick match after dinner.  Kate thinks that her low level Amazon should survive when she drops her guard, takes a direct hit in the head by a chaos champion's meat cleaver the size of her torso and falls back off a 6 meter cliff onto stone.  The jury is out.  Next month I am fitting spiked traps.

5 comments:

  1. Hot damn Dave, that board looks goood.

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  2. Hi!

    Thats a beautiful board!

    I have been making do with vinyl floor tiles stuck to cork tiles but seeing your board makes me want to upgrade!

    Would it be posssible for you to post a tutorial?

    All the best!Hi!

    Thats a beautiful board!

    I have been making do with vinyl floor tiles stuck to cork tiles but seeing your board makes me want to upgrade!

    Would it be posssible for you to post a tutorial?

    All the best!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Stunning, stunning, stunning. Once again, I find myself needing to re-do a project that I thought was done because you have shown me a far superior version. Great job. One question- how did you get such smooth transitions between grass and soil on the board? I assume there is a slight overlap, but it's hard to tell from the pics. A quick tutorial WOULD be helpful. . . *please*. :)

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  4. Looking absolutely brilliant Dave - very atmospheric!
    Been turning my attention to terrain again to finish off the Orc's Drift project - I'm thinking modular jungle boards next though for the Magnificent Svenn, so any more tips like fixing the scatter down with matt sealer would be most appreciated!

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  5. @Brian - try stippling soil coloured paint onto your flock to soften the transition between flock and dirt.

    @ Leutenant Brittan - sure, I will take photos when I make up the next pieces of board.

    Already thinking that making a thicker board would have allowed me to sink rivers in... maybe on the next board set I do!

    ReplyDelete