This is my first real attempt at terrain in anything other than 6mm since I was in middle school. I decided to go for a modular board representing the lost colony Shoshone in my Redoubt setting. Shoshone is mostly high desert, with a bitterly cold climate that is below freezing most of the year (one Shoshone year is equivalent to nearly two Earth standard years) outside of the equatorial regions.
The idea is to make enough tiles to occupy a standard (6' x 3'-ish) folding table – that should be around 18 tiles. Buildings will be scratchbuilt out of wood stock, and separate from the tiles – I would like the ability to place structures independent of the terrain layout. A couple ranch houses, a barn or two, and a mine headframe should be sufficient for now.
Base material is 12" x 12" x 3mm birch plywood; terrain features are Flora dry foam sculpted with a hand file.
Before painting, texturing, and anything else.
The tiles were given a base coat of Krylon spray primer. I used dilute PVA glue to fix sand (the product of ultra-small-scale surface mining in my yard utilizing a bowl and a plastic spoon) to the board to simulate rocky areas. Some cedar mulch twigs serve as dead trees.
Perspective view to show terrain elevation.
I forgot to take intermediary photos. After this point, I made up a mixture of brown acrylic paint, PVA glue, sand, and water to produce a thin texture paint to quickly cover the entire tile set. After this dried, I drybrushed beige over everything to highlight texture. Ground covering was added strategically. I then stippled the tiles liberally with white paint to simulate lighter snow accumulations, and used puddled PVA glue to create snowdrifts.
The finished product!
ARVX-1B Arapaho gunship fanjets of C Troop, 1/17th Cav swoop in for a gun run on 'Wreaker' bandits west of Winston, Mineral County.
A scout-sniper team of 2/21st Combat Support (Target Acquisition) observes an OVX-3B Pueblo scout fanjet dropping off an aero rifle team to investigate a probable enemy contact. The scout-sniper team has spent the last two days in this position, monitoring a slot canyon that has been the site of several bandit ambushes over the past month.
is back from Council of Five Nations.
