Dale's Terrain Boards

Terrain Boards Step by Step By Dale Pepperell When starting to build terrain boards there are a few things you need to think about: table size, storage, transport, colours, position of the terrain on the boards, and materials. The size of the table is going to be 1800mm by 1200mm (6’ by 4’), this is a good size to fit into most gaming areas and makes for easy storage. The 1800mm by 1200mm areas is easily divided into three sections, these three sections will be our terrain boards. By splitting the table size like this it makes the terrain boards easier to transport and store, as well as leaving room for variation later on as you make more terrain boards.

With the three boards you’ll have to design a layout for road, hills, streams and other terrain features. Part of this process is to consider how these features align with each other at the edges. If you make sure they always enter and exit from the same points on the board edges you can allow the boards to be arranged in several different ways to make a variety of tables. So plan your design on paper before you start work. Left: Here are several boards lined up with hills and roads meeting. The roads enter and exit from the cntre of the short edge and from 1/4 along the long edge.

Cut a sheet of paper into three parts and draw your design on them, and then play around with different arrangements so you can work out the points where the terrain features meet. As well as standardising the meeting points of terrain, you’ll also have to consider the width as well, you can do what you like inside the boards, but make sure where the features meet they are the same width on each board.

Materials Hardboard or MDF sheets x 3 600mm wide x 1200mm long x 6mm thick Polystyrene Sheets x 6 600mm wide x 1200mm long x 40mm thick Thickness will depend on your choice and what is available, as long as they are all the same thickness. PVA (Woodglue), craft knife, metal ruler, marker pen, sand, static grass, kitty litter (un-used of course!), clump foliage, filler/putty, paint and brushes.

Step 1 Glue the first polystyrene sheet to the hardboard or MDF sheet with the PVA glue. Mark the polystyrene into grids, and then copy your plan terrain features onto the grid drawing on roads, hill positions etc.

Step 2 Cut hills out of a second sheet of polystyrene and glue them into position. Remember to make the hill slightly bigger then it needs to be so you can sculpt its shape later. Leave for a while until the PVA glue is dry.

Step 3 Next sculpt your terrain features. Hills can be a variety of shapes, from gentle slopes to cliffs. Have a look at some photos of the real terrain you are trying to model, this will give you ideas and inspiration. Roads, depressions and rocky features can be added at this point as well.

The kitty litter can be used to make ruins, stone walls and rough ground. The polystyrene can be easily cut with your craft knife, or even a bread knife, and can be sanded with coarse sandpaper (make sure you work outside or in a well ventilated area). The putty is used to fill in joins etc, and also for surfacing roads where you want to add footprints and track ruts etc.

Step 4 Texture the rest of the board by painting with the base terrain colour and sprinkling the wet paint with sand before sealing with another coat of paint. Different size scatter material can be used to get different effects.

Model rail ballast comes in different sizes and makes a great supplement to the sand. Once the paint is dry you can dry-brush the whole board with a lighter shade of your base colour. You can then paint different coloured features such as roads and water features.

Step 5 Finally, apply the static grass in patches where appropriate. Use the clump foliage to add bushy growth around rocky areas, along roads or by streams for variety.

Once the terrain boards are complete you can also make some ’loose’ or ’scatter’ terrain to be used on your boards. Make these using the same colours and materials to keep the look of your table consistent. These can be forests, buildings, hedges, rivers (if you haven’t built them into your boards), orchards and groves etc. Enjoy!