"Making Terrain Boards: Dirt and Stone " Topic

Cool!

Tutorial here
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Amicalement
Armand

Gosh that is nice

John T

Yep, a very impressive, and realistic looking effect.

Very nice!

Happy you like it boys!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

This is fantastic!

I am making note of this techniqe, as this is another technique that can be used to countering warpage in insulation board. Please make a note of this photo;

He recognized the dynamic of how to counter the warping by gluing two pieces in opposing directions.

I also make 2x4 boards(as shown in my other thread) and I counter warpage by gluing the insulation board to MDF and also by screwing and gluing a wooden frame to the MDF to counter any warpage in the MDF. Both his technique and my technique result in terrain boards that are 1 1/2" in height(his are two layers of 3/4" foam, mine are a layer of 1/2" MDF + 1" of foam.

My results;

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However his technique is easier to do because you are avoiding having to do any cutting of wood and you also are avoiding having to do any drilling or screwing. The plastic styrene edge protectors seem like they will work very well in protecting the foam of the board.

He and I share the same philosophy that you can't just make foam boards out of straight foam without protecting the edges. Well, let me rephrase that – you CAN make them without any protection on the edges, but I just can't see myself putting all that time and effort into terrain boards and then allow them to be subjected to constant chipping and breaking.

Very nicely done, I really like seeing other wargamers who are able to use some engineering to counter-act and achieve success despite having to deal with crappy materials!

Baranovich, thanks for calling my attention to the plastic edging. Nice tip.

Many thanks for share Baranovich!!

Amicalement
Armand

His blog is really worth a look. I also like his philosophy on seams on terrain tables. I think that the fewer seams the better to minimize the visual distraction. Unless you can make smaller boards that are so tightly engineered and can fit so tightly together as to blend the seams, you're going to have lines everywhere.

One example is the Youtube channel Terranscapes. Now, don't get me wrong! Terran makes amazing terrain and is incredibly talented, I credit him for my river water effects after I watched his Mod Podge tutorials, he's just awesome. But for me, the one big weakness in his terrain boards is that he makes his tiles/boards too small. I believe he does his boards in 12"x20" pieces, which leaves seams all over the place when you do a full-size board. For me it just makes the battlefield into a grid and that visual distraction is too much for me.

This is what I'm talking about;
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That is why I do 2 x 4 boards and no smaller. That way if I use four of them for a 4 x 8 board I only have a total of three seams going across the short way of the board.

Here's what my 4 x 4 river board setup looks like. You only have one seam down the middle;

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