Building a world on a budget
It has been nearly six years since I wrote about my attempts to scratch-build some terrain, which seems like an inordinate amount of time when I think about it. I have made a few pieces during that time, but I have never really felt the need to write about them.
What, I hear you ask, has spurred on this sudden desire to feature one of my terrain pieces on the blog? Well, I am embarking on one of my bigger projects. It is not huge compared with what some wargamers get up to, I'm looking at you, Yarkshire Gamer, but it is big for me.
Most of my games, and the subsequent battle reports, are fought on the edges of society, away from urban areas. I thought it was time to change that by building some urban gaming tiles and the terrain to go with them.
I am going to build four 1' × 1' tiles: two with straight roads and two with corners. I hope these will give me enough variety in the layouts to keep things interesting.
This first blog post will outline the process I used to make the first tile.
Project seven: An urban street-one
The urban tile started out as a collection of bits and pieces from the 100-yen shop. For a solid base that I hope will not warp, I chose a 30 cm × 30 cm pegboard. The holes in the pegboard should help keep the weight down when I am carrying the tiles around.
On top of the pegboard, I used thin foam board for the road and thicker foam-core board for the concrete areas. The pavement and kerbstones were both made from cardboard. I am hoping that using these different materials will give the finished tile some interesting textures.
I wanted to protect the various materials from water and add a little more texture to the tile before I started painting it, so I mixed some PVA glue with baking powder to make a thick, gritty paste. I then applied this to the entire tile. Once it had dried, I applied a coat of dark grey paint as an undercoat and base coat.
I wanted the tile to have the look of old, weathered concrete, so I grabbed a few different pots of grey and black paint. My original plan was to apply the paint with an airbrush—I do not own one, and probably never will—but the effect did not look right, so I stippled the paint on with a piece of kitchen sponge instead. I was really pleased with the overall effect.
To tone things down, I applied the last of my Agrax Earthshade. It means that I will now have to venture into a Games Workshop once again to buy some more. I have not been to one in years, so I hope the staff in Japan are not as pushy as they were in my experience of the UK.
To finish the tile off, I used a stencil for the road markings, which are a little oversized, but I like the effect. I also added some mud-effect paint to the gutter.
I am pretty happy with how the whole piece turned out. My only worry is that I may not be able to make the other three tiles match the first one, as I am not the most precise person or the best record-keeper.
