I've been playing around with various terrain projects to try and improve my skills over the last year or so. Since last August, I've made lots of flock in varying shades of green from foam, sawdust and tea leaves, experimented with making plaster rocks and leopard spot painting them, improved some cheap trees, made some hedges and bushes,
I've always fancied a fully landscaped 15mm gaming table but I know that separate terrain pieces are more flexible. Unless you have a permanent set-up though, most gaming tables still end up obviously flat with stuff added to them. My ambition is to one day make a set of modular boards, probably with 2x4 foot sections. That should give enough space for really good bits of fully 3d scenery which hopefully help hide the modular nature, but still be easily stored.
That day is still some way off, but feeling a sudden urge to make something larger, I decided I'd make use of a couple of big sheets of expanded polystyrene in the garage. Number 1 son assisted with designing the layout of the board and made use of my chunky permanent marker to sketch things out.
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| Planned layout. |
The base sheet is 1" expanded polystyrene, rather dirty and scruffy looking. I think it was originally the "cover" for our water tank in the loft. The other sheet (of mysterious origin) seems to be about 20mm thick and this was chopped up into sections to make the hills. Some offcuts of XPS rescued from a local building site would come in useful for some smaller, finer details such as steps.
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| Basic polystyrene landform. |
I wanted some big rocky hills to take full advantage of the fact this is going to be fixed scenery. One side of the board has a large rocky outcropping which will be finished using plaster of Paris rock casts. A roadway cuts across the board, dividing in a Y-junction.
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| Main rocky outcropping. |
Various little ledges run across the front of the outcrop. Some sort of ruined building will sit atop the plateau, with a little bridge linking to the smaller outcrop at the side.
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| Main rocky outcropping. |
The other side of the board has a lower hill on one corner. The road splits off in 2 different directions, the smaller will be a dirt track.
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| Lower level hill. |
Originally I was thinking of making the top of the outcropping removable
with some rooms carved into the polystyrene but despite number 1 son's
urging, I decided to save that for another time. I'd rather concentrate
on getting the basics down first before I move onto things like
removable-topped rocky hills. There are a few other changes to the original plan too.
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| Original plan. |
The main outcrop has a gap in one corner. The plan is for a small doorway leading into a hidden underground base.
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| Rear of rocky outcropping. |
There will be a loading/assembly area by the door. Some steps will lead up to the upper part of the rock outcrop.
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| Rear of main outcrop with gap for steps. |
The front of the outcrop has a small outcrop framing a gap through onto a ledge.
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| Smaller rock outcrop. |
The ledges will provide a good field of fire over the road.
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| Ledges at the front of the main outrcop. |
All the polystyrene layers were glued together with Gorilla glue. Squeeze a wiggly line on the polystyrene, spritz with a plant mister to activate it and put the next layer of polystyrene on. Pop a couple of cans of paint on top to weight it down and ensure the glue bonds firmly as it expands.
The next stage will be to carve the rough polystyrene into a more refined shape and add the rock moulds.
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