Modular Board

This is the largest project I have undertaken yet. The idea was to create a board to enter into a prize competition at a local gaming convention called ReCon held by the Minnesota Miniature Gaming Association. We missed the July deadline but managed to get the board done for ReCon in October. The board was now part of the "Farewell to 40K Tour," celebrating the release of 4th edition.

The board is based on 1 3/4 styrofoam glued to 1/2 plywood with Liquid Nails. The board is divided into 2 4' x 4' sections. More descriptions of the various aspects of the project are below.

The wall sections are 2" thick blue styrofoam with seperate buttresses glued into place. Each wall section is 6" wide and 8" tall. The doors are simply foamcore with bamboo skewers as hinges. The front bunkers are also foamcore construction. The tank traps are plaster casts of ice cube trays. The barbed wire is wire fencing twisted together; the posts simply chopsticks. Other battlefield items are battlefield accessory bits, dollar store figurines smashed to pieces, model railroad trees and copper fittings as barrels.

In the background can be seen the canyon and the top of the castle gate. The canyon was made by building up and interior skeleton with foam offcuts and then glueing bark chips to the outside with cheap caulking. The castle is a Cinderella Dream Castle I picked up at a garage sale for 10 cents. More railroad trees top the canyon.

Here is a back view of the board and castle with some old- school Khorne Berzerkers hanging out. Some slight modifications were made to the castle...

Two of the towers were removed and the holes in the floor filled in so figures could stand in them. The pillars were replaced with wedding cake pillars, and dollar store cherubs were added to various locations. The balcony was also lined with plactic skull rings. An imerial eagle pin was added to the front above the drawbridge.

The trenches were cut into the foam base. Balsa strips were cut from a large sheet for a rough look and glued into place. Matchsticks were used to build the walls.

The barrels (left side of picture) are copper plumbing fittings with end caps cut from card. Caps were made by punching card disks with a leather punch.

The tank traps were cast from a square ice cube tray in plaster of paris. they were glued into place and then distressed with a knife and a Dremel.

The barbed wire was made by cutting lengths of wire fencing so it was a wire with pointy cross pieces coming off of it (kinda looks like this HHHHHH) The lengths were then folded in half to decrease the spacing between "teeth" and then the wires were twisted together to cause the "teeth" to stick out in random directions.

There is also the sliding door and busted pieces from a floppy disk as battlefield debris.

Here is a shot of the space between the gates. There are more plaster tank traps, with some dollar store figurines as statues. The ruin is made from plastic ruins exactly as the Ruined Corner was.

The doors for the second gate are decorated with more cherubs and skull rings.

The trench-section of the board is covered with coarse sand drybrushed from black to brown to tan. The road is fine terrarium sand painted black and drybrushed grey. The other stone and concrete pieces are drybrushed with various stages of grays and white. The castle was drybrushed from black to white. The treches were drybrushed from black to dark brown to burnt sienna to tan.

The remaining areas were covered with various grades and mixtures of flock.

This picture is of the space between the castle and second gate. The angels are simply dollar store items glued to wedding cake pillars.