Thursday 2 July 2015

Terrain making, home baking

I don't do this very often, but Willie gave me some large thick Polystyrene tiles. One thing we lack is something that looks the part for the 'edge of the world' on our gaming tables. Usually this would take the form of a long ridge line to mark the edge of the battlefield, such as at Hydaspes or maybe Pharsalus, and also for occasional uses in really large games. Until now, this has usually been fudged by cobbling together a load of low hills, nut it doesn't really look right. So, here's the recipe:

Sourced from Specialist Crafts in the UK, some self-adhesive foam board. These could be used to strengthen the tiles if necessary. The ones at the top left are for two 3' long ridges, the rest are for other sizes of hills. I'm only going to make the two long ones just now.
One very large tile: 4' by 18'. And 2.5" thick.
All cut up and ready to go. I used three tiles to get all of the hill shapes I'll ever need.
My poor old hot wire cutter couldn't cope with tiles this thick, so I ended using a saw to produce some slopes. These are going to be steep hills. As you can see, the finish isn't smooth, but ModRoc is my secret ingredient, also sourced from Specialist Crafts. A lot of mess is created in the making of these tiles! One of the things I dislike about polystyrene is that it abrades really easily, even with a perfect hot knife smooth finish - hence the ModRoc to seal it all in properly.
Two long ridges. The ModRoc strips are clearly visible.
Painted with textured masonry paint (sandstone) and randomly flocked.
Finally, textured with cheap brown plastic wood (coloured decorator's caulk, sort of) and flocked some more. These will do for most climates, I hope, and although they are a bit rough and ready I can always go back and do some more work on them. They will see their first use on Saturday in a large Iberian ancients game. I quite enjoyed making a mess...

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