Show No.4

Terrain Board Design

Pro-Create Putty and Website Round-up

 

 

Terrain Board Design

When I decided to make a new set of terrain boards there were several things that I had to consider. The scale of figures I will be using on them, practicality of making interchangeable boards, storage of the boards when I am not using them, and also ease of transporting them.

A lot of these questions come down to one question, "What size boards do I make?". Now for storage, versatility and ease of transportation, I feel that the best size to go with would be 2' or 600mm square boards.

This gives you a decent size board to put terrain features on (even for larger scale figures), without making the boards too large for storage and transportation. It also means that different table configurations can be put together to create good variation in table layout. Most gamers are happy to use a table that is 4' wide by 6' or 8' long. Most players can reach the middle of a 4' table, so that is a reasonable size to work with.

Now having said all this, I was given a large amount of polystyrene sheet, in various thicknesses, ranging from 50mm to 160mm. Clearly these were ideal for making my terrain boards with. Unfortunately most of them are only 18" or 460mm square, with a few being 18" by 36".

So it looks like my boards are going to have to be a little smaller than I originally planned. They are still a reasonable size for terrain features , definitely great for storage and transportation, the only real drawback is that when in use, my table layout will have to be 3' foot wide instead of 4. This makes it a little narrower than I would have preferred, but as I am doing more and more skirmish gaming these days I feel that I can get away with it as I am generally not going to have large 28mm armies fighting on it. I may occasionally use the boards for micro armour battles, but again the 3' width will be fine for that.

The next thing to do is to decide on the general terrain for the boards. Now clearly for most games a relatively flat table that you can put scenic items onto is going to be most versatile. However with the decent selection of thicknesses that I have this means that I can build a good range of different hills straight onto the boards and if layed out properly they should still offer the versatility I am looking for.

The thinner boards I have are all 50mm thick. Now this is pretty handy as it's the perfect thickness to use for my flat boards. It is thick enough to be rigid, but still thin enough that I can store the boards easily.

Now, as I have 5 sheets of 18" by 36" 50mm foam I have decided to use 3 of these boards as flat and featureless boards. This will give me a reasonable amount of flat table area to use either as open ground or to put extra terrain pieces on as they are needed.

I have decided to make the flat boards double sided so that I can put roads on one side and plain grassland on the other. I also have 2 18" square boards that I will use as plain flat boards. That will give me enough plain boards to be able to make any combination of different tables up, once combined with the other more specialised pieces.

Moving on to the deeper pieces of foam, so that they can be combined with the 50mm sheets they will need to be reduced down to 50mm on at least 2 sides, and preferably 3 or 4 sides.

There are 4 18" squares that are 160mm deep. I will use two of them to make sloping hill boards. 50mm deep across one edge and 160mm deep on the opposite edge.

I cut and shape the foam with a large kitchen knife, a bread knife to be exact. The fine teeth on the knife cut the foam well, without ripping it or leaving teeth marks in the foam. At the 50mm edge I will leave a flat area about 50mm wide then gently slope the foam up and leave another 50mm flat at the top 160mm high edge.

Before I start to cut the foam I make a card profile with the shallow S shape I plan to use, so that I can reproduce the same curve on each side of the boards. That way when they are sitting side by side they will fit together and create a smooth battlefield.

I then use a marker pen to transfer the cut line from the profile onto the foam.

This is where it gets messy! Anyone who has tried cutting polystyrene with a knife will soon find that you end up with masses of statically charged polystyrene "snow" everywhere. You will be absolutely covered in the stuff when you are finished. If you try to brush it off with your hands it sticks to them, it sticks to everything. The only really good way I have found to remove it is either to blow it off with a compressed air line 9in which case it just ends up somewhere else, or probably a better method is to clean yourself and your work area down with a vacuum cleaner. Of course the vacuum cleaner will end up covered in the "snow" as well, but you will get there eventually. Anyway the moral of the story is, don't cut polystyrene in your living room if you want your wife or partner to talk to you ever again!

Now the bread knife I am using has a 10" blade on it, so I can't cut right through the foam, it is simply a case of cutting carefully and following the cut line all around the outside, and eventually the scrap foam will come off the top. I wasn't too concerned at this point about getting a really smooth finish on the board, I just hacked the foam away until I had roughly the shape I needed. So long as the edges were all fairly neat the rest would be sorted out later.

As I said earlier I have 5 of these 160mm deep pieces, the third one I decided to use as a corner hill with 2 sides being 50mm deep and the other two sides rising up to 160mm at the far corner.

I used the edge profile I had made for the other two hills to reproduce the same cut line on this one so it would fit in nicely with the two hill I have already done.

The 4th piece of 160mm deep foam I have decided to use to make a stand-alone hill. This means that the board will need to be 50mm deep all around the 4 edges.

It will need to have enough flat area around it to make it look vaguely natural and I will need to carve the polystyrene off of the block with no drawn on guides around the outside other than the 50mm deep cut line. Before I started this I drew out several plans with contour lines so that I had a reasonable idea of the shape I was aiming for before I hacked into the block.

Standing staring at the block of foam, before I started gave me some idea of how Michelangelo must have felt, staring at his block of marble before he started carving his statue of David. I new my hill was in there somewhere, and I just had to carve away until I found it.

Anyway, once I had worked up the courage to start hacking into the block I soon started to get the shape I was looking for. Now this being quite a high hill for a wargaming table means that it will have fairly steep sides; not great for standing figures on as they tend to be top heavy and end up falling over all the time.

To counter this problem I have cut my hills so that they have plenty of flat ledges at different heights around them. This is something of a compromise between making the hills look totally natural and making the classic stepped hills many wargamers use for simplicity on their tables. The look I am after will combine the flat ledges that are practical, with a more natural looking effect, hopefully leading to a more attractive table.

The 5th piece of 160mm foam I have set to one side, so that I can use it for something special once I have all the basic boards ready.

I have one 18" square of foam that is 200mm thick. Now, rather than hack this up too much I have decided that this will be most useful as a high plateau. So, I have lowered all 4 edges to 160mm, ut left most of the board at the full 200mm thickness.

When combined with the other 3 hill boards this makes a spectacularly large hill at one end of a gaming table.

The final board I am going to make in the initial batch is going to be a pass or narrow defile between two hills. The foam block I am using is 125mm deep and again will be cut down to 50mm on all 4 edges. The pass in the middle will also be around the 50mm height right across the board.

Now, I have tried to leave a reasonable amount of flat area on the top of the two hills, so that they can have a good number of figures on them. However, this has meant that both hills have very steep sided with no real area for any figures to stand part way up them. I may have to alter them later on if I feel I need a more reasonable slope on them.

As these boards are to be used mainly for some pulp gaming I have planned I feel that the more dramatic look of this board is probably more important than making the hills more accessible for figure moving up or down them.

OK, I have designed and cut the basic shapes of my boards, I have a good selection of flat boards and hills. The polystyrene sheet is cut and ready. Now, polystyrene is not terribly strong, and if these boards get a lot of use they will get tatty very quickly, especially if I use them for demo games at wargames show. In the next show I will look at how I have toughened the boards and finished them off ready to start applying the colour and scenic details.