Building a Gaming Board – pt 2.
In the previous asrticle, I've started work on my winter themed Frostgrave board. So far, I've covered the cutting of the plywood, making a frame, building volume with HD styrofoam, adding cliffs and river banks and I've finished the article with texture application.
I'm at about the half way mark with the building of this board and the main idea of this build is to have a single board for my Malifaux games which means I would require a 90x90cm (3'x3') board. I decided to go with a frozen river, with a couple of crossings. I'd also wanted at least one road and several paths that wouldn't have been (entirely) covered with snow. I'd also wanted to add some levels to my board so it wouldn't be just flat. Two or three levels would have been perfect. Since this wouldn't be a fixed terrain board, I'd still needed plenty of flat areas to place the scenery before my games. In this issue, I'll be painting the board's three separate kinds of surfaces (ground, cliffs and river), followed by adding the river which will be the most tricky and most time consuming part of the build. After the river sets, I'll add vegetation, roots, grass tufts and alike. I'll also add a couple of fir/pine trees. In the end, I'll add ice surfaces (ice and icicles) as well as cover the entire board with snow.
Planning
Most of the planning was done in the last issue. The main needs and wants were decided and all that was left was to micro-manage some issues like when to paint, when to pour the resin and how to add the snow. During the build last issue, as always no matter how good you plan things, there were some things that weren't accounted for that might pose some troubles and problems later during the build. First of those were how to gather all the loose texturing material without simply chucking it all away in the yard. Also, pouring in the resin and adding the snow needed careful planning in order not to accidentally mess and ruin previous work. For instance, if I opted to put static grass, I'd need to put it before pouring in the resin to prevent stray static fibres from getting accidentally stuck in the resin while it cured. Also, protection of details (like river, cliffs and tufts/static grass) would be crucial before adding the snow to prevent snow from completely covering them.
After a short think, I came up with this list of tools and materials that I would need to finish this board:
- glues - PVA 1kg, 1x10g Superglue
- paints and spreys - 6 Pebeo Deco Paints (Black, White, Grey, Brown, Ochre and Ash), one black, ash, off white and pure white matt acrylic spreys and one clear matt acrylic sprey
- large brushes No 90, No 40
- airbrush
- brush size 16
- several roots
- static grass tufts and scatter (three to four sorts)
- Clear Water gel by Ammo by Mig Jimenez
- Resin (Gedeo Crystal Resin)
- Pebeo Vitrail Sky Blue paint
- 20-ish pine trees
- NOCH icicles
- NOCH snow products (2 packages)
- NOCH ice crystals
- snow foam in a sprey can
- scalpel blade
- scissors
- masking tape
- thin card (several pieces)
- portable hand-held vacuum cleaner
Preparation work
As mentioned before, last issue I left the entire table covered with texture material – sand and gravel. As I didn't make a mixture of water, PVA glue and sand/gravel, opting to first put PVA glue and sprinkle the texture over it, it was now necessary to remove the excess sand, gravel and pebbles from the board. Normally, when doing terrain, I would suggest usine a large cardboard lid and simply turn over the terrain over it. However, my board is 90 x 90 cm with well over 5kg now and I didn't have a large enough receptical to gather all the leftover texturing material. Simply turning it over the floor of my garage was also out of the question. To gather all (or most) of the texturing material, I used a small hand held battery powered vacuum cleaner that housekeepers use for collecting breadcrums in the kitchen. A couple of minutes of vacuuming, removed most of the excess material. Rest was lost alas when I turned the board over in my back yard. But I did manage to salvage almost an entire jar worth of basing material.
Undercoat
When the excess texture material was removed, I could proceed with the painting. First step as always was to undercoat the board. This time, I would use four different spreys to do the undercoating. All the main textures (apart from the cliffs and the river) were undercoated black. Rest of the surfaces, notably: cliffs, boulders and river) was first undercoated white followed by a layer of off white and ash spreys. When these were dry, I then overspreyed those surfaces lightly with pure white sprey again. In the end, I turned back to black sprey to repair the sloppy spreying in places.
Airbrushing the washes
The next step in painting was to airbrush some washes to the riverbed and all the stone parts (cliffs, river banks and boulders). I used these washes: • Coelia Greenshade • Athonian Camoshade • Druchii Violet • Nuln Oil • Seraphim Sepia • Agrax Earthshade
For the riverbed, I used only the Coelia Greenshade, Athonian Camoshade and Nuln Oil. On the stone parts, I used all of them with repeats of Nuln Oil and Coelia Greenshade. As these colours were washes, the drying period between the layers was long. To shorten this period, I used an old hair dryer to speed up the drying process. Remember to always airbrush (and sprey from sprey cans) in a well ventilated areas!
Painting the texture
When I was done with applying the washes to the cliffs and the river, it was time to paint the rest of the surfaces on my board. Apart from the river and the cliffs, there were two distinct surfaces to paint. One was the normal ground, the other road and paths. I decided to paint all those surfaces with an initial layer of drybrushed Pebeo Brown. To apply it, I used the biggest brush I could find – size 90. Once the layer was dry, I applied a layer of Pebeo Ochre to the road and paths only. Again, when this layer was dry, I painted the entire surface with a drybrushed layer of Pebeo Ash. The difference in the layers due to the Ochre colouration on the paths and road is still visible. At this point, I would normally stop painting. Maybe adding a final highlight of pure Pebeo Antique White to the most raised surfaces only. However, most of this board would be covered with snow, so I decided to push the colour even whiter. I added two more layers to all the surfaces. First was with the afore mentioned Pebeo Antique White and the latter was done with pure Pebeo White. Note that the difference between the normal ground texture and the paths/road surface is still visible. Also, you may notice that the paintjob was not as tidy as it could have been. The reason behind this was two-fold. First, I was rushing the job a little. Second, I didn't go back as I would normally, only because I was aware that most of the surfaces would be covered with snow in the end. A careful reader/viewer may notice some white-ish marks in the road that mark the spots where some pebbles were glued that got knocked of during painting. These I also did not go back to repair. I would simply cover those places with either snow or grass tufts to save time.
Painting the cliffs
Painting the cliffs was relatively simple. I just drybrushed some Pebeo Grey followed by Pebeo White. I then realised, that these layers covered almost the entire airbrushed washes effects. So I decided to turn back to my airbrush and re-apply those layers, using Coelia Greenshade, Athonian Camoshade, Druchii Violet and Nuln Oil. This time, I did not wait for the layers to dry. Instead I opted for the washes to mix freely due to the pressure applied from the airbrush.
Making the river
After the paintjob, it was time to make the river. Most of the river had river banks made from schist in the last issue. However, there was a part that had a low crossing which didn't have any elevation from the rest of the riverbank. To make the river bed one whole, I needed to model some sort of an embankment to prevent the resin from spreading to the road. The job fell on Clear Water gel by Ammo by MIG. It is a white paste that dries clear. Using a small brush, I made a small embankment that was 2-3mm high and I left it to dry over night.
Unfortunately, that night the rain started to fall and the temperature dropped down significantly. This caused the effect not to dry completely. It still remained white. As I was chasing a deadline, I decided to proceed with the resin pouring despite it not being clear. I could always cover this part with snow at a later point.
For the river, I opted to use Gedeo Crystal Resin. A quick calculation based on rough estimations of the river being 5cm wide and 90cm long coupled with my wish for the river to be 1-2mm deep, produced the result that I needed 45-90ml of resin. The Gedeo Crystal Resin is my resin of choice, mostly because it is a two component resin that is mixed in 2:1 volume ratio. This makes it really easy to use in almost all volumes neccessary. During the airbrushing, I spent all of my Nuln Oil. Fortunately, I saved the 24ml bottle. Using two fills of resin (48ml) and one fill of hardener (24ml) ensured that I hade 72ml of resin. Almost perfect for my river. To slightly tint the resin, I used Pebeo Vitrail Sky Blue colour. Remember to add the colour after you mixed the resin and the hardener to ensure the resin sets properly.
Also, the resin mixture is quite volatile and can even produce some heat as the curing is an exothermic reaction so the use of protective gloves is recommended.
Adding pigments
At this point I still was not satisfied with the look of my cliffs so I decided to add some pigments to it. Using rust and ochre pigments applied randomly throughout the cliffs, I added some subtle tones. In places those were not so subtle. I fixed the pigments using AK Interactive Pigment Fixer using a large brush (size 16).
Roots on the cliffs
To add some further variety to the cliffs, I decided to add some roots. If you remember from last issue, I went on a hike to the hills where I gathered some stones I used to make cliffs with. On the same hike, I also gathered some roots from an overturned tree stump. These, when washed, make excellent trees, dried shrubs and even roots in our small scale. Using super glue I fixed them in desired places making sure I glued their both ends. This way, they wouldn't be so easy to dislocate during gaming. Alternatively, you can always pin them using a really thin wire.
Adding snow to the pine/fir trees
Next step was to add the trees. I decided I would use NOCH fir/pine trees that come in a bag of 50. I would plant 20 of them to my board. Before gluing them to the board, I decided to paint them white and add some snow. First I spreyed them using a white matt acrylic sprey. This was still not white enough for me, so I used Pebeo White applied with a size 16 brush cut for drybrushing. Be careful, this is a messy procedure and you'll get spreyed white as my T-shirt will attest. When the white colour was dry, I spreyed the trees with snow foam from a sprey can. This added some volume to the snowy effect that I was going for. When the foam was dry, I spreyed the trees with clear acrylic mat sprey to add some strength to the bond between the trees and the snow foam.
Low branches
While the snow was drying on the fir/pine trees I decided to add some more medium to low vegetation to my board. Once again, I turned to the roots gathered on my hike to the hills. I used some cool looking roots that had at least two to three branches to make some low branches that are growing from the cliffs of my board. I glued them arbitrarily around the cliffs, just making sure they do not get in the way of gaming. To glue them in place I used some super glue. If you are worried that the branches might get knocked off, you can always pin them using wire/paperclips to the cliffs.
Ice on the river
With the resin now totally cured, I had to add some ice on the riverbanks. Fortunately, during Iron Painter, I discovered a cool product used by railroad modellers to add ice to their rivers. It is made by a german company called NOCH. Their Ice Crystals comes in a rubbery tube and is some sort of paste that can be applied directly from the tube to a frozen lake, a wintery pond, to the street or to windows and subsequently be easily modelled with a brush. Once dry it gives the shimmering effect of ice. I used a large brush (size 16) to apply it to my river banks. I made sure that the layer wasn't uniform making it narrower and wider, lower and higher and I even placed a couple of pieces inside the river.
Also, once dry, you can add some Clear Water gel from Ammo by Mig to form a stream if you wish. I decided not to as I wanted my river not to be rapids.
Icicles
Another NOCH product I discovered while doing Iron Painter back in 2017 was the NOCH Icicles tube. This is really easy to use product that comes out of the rubber tube as a small worm. It is obviously some sort of resin that dries clear and has quite high a rigidity. Perfect for making icicles. I decided to use them only around the river on the cliffs and low branches. This way, the branches when covered with the NOCH Icicles, not only would they look frozen, but would be more rigid which will prevent breakage during gaming.
Low vegetation
Since the majority of the board would be covered with snow, I decided not to use generic static grass, but opted for a slightly more expenisve tufts. The tufts I used are from Gamer's Grass and they come in a number of colouration, height and size. I used 12mm, 6mm and 4mm long tufts in beige, winter, dry and autumn colouration, as well as spikey variant which added quite some character to the cliffs underneath which I glued them using PVA glue.
Gluing the pines
Depending on the sort of trees you have, you can fix them to your board in several ways. First, and the easiest, is to glue the trees using PVA glue. Since my trees had the roots made in the bottom, I chose this method. Not only do they provide wide enough an area for the glue to work, the fact that the roots were modelled made them realistic enough to use as is. However, some trees come on a circular base (about 2cm in diametre). If you use those, my advice would be to remove the circular base and add a wire pin (using a pin vice or a dremel). This will provide added strenght to the bond. Around the tree, I would then suggest planting some low vegetation (or snow in this case) to hide the fact that there is no root present.
Adding the snow
The last thing to add to this board will be the snow. My initial plan was to cover the entire board (minus the river, most of the cliffs, roads and paths) with several layers of NOCH snow products glued by a thick layer of PVA glue. However, that seemed like a waste of material (both the snow product and PVA glue) so I decided only to use the NOCH snow underneath the trees. I applied a thick layer of PVA glue around the trees and using a large spoon sprinkled the snow product. Also, at this time I used a watered down mixture of PVA glue, water and white paint to cover some of the ice surfaces on the river. Those areas were also covered with snow product.
Rest of the surfaces, I sprinkled with snow foam from a sprey can. In all, I used two sprey cans. Around the sensitive areas like river, cliffs and tufts I used some thin card to protect them from the sprey. Once dry, I spreyed some clear matt sprey to add strenght to the effect. This way, I saved both money and time as this is truly a fast method. Eventually, due to gaming on the board, I expect some of the snow to peel of. However, the snow foam from a sprey can costs less than 2 USD so the cost of repairing isn't high.
The finished product
After a couple of weeks of building on and off, my board was finished. In total, it cost less than 100USD with all the materials used (over half of which is resin and fir/pine trees).
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