I have a huge backlog of projects to upload, so here we go!
I recently revamped my terrain tiles:
I made them by sandwiching a 25mm sheet of expanded polystyrene between two 300mm vinyl floor tiles. After gluing on the tiles, I trim the polystyrene to size with a hot wire cutter. They’re not too hefty a weight for their size, and don’t warp or wear away at the corners. There are loads of cheap and great terrain systems available these days but this is the way 15 year-old me wanted to do it back in the 80’s. There’s nothing like realising a childhood dream, even if it is a bit of a naff one.
To decorate the terrain tiles, I give them a mid-brown base coat then sprinkled a mix of Woodland Scenics ballast and flock over a layer of PVA glue. Some tiles also get a second layer of static grass. The tiles can be flipped over, so most of them have a desert or urban finish on the reverse.
The dark tiles are the old ones. I made them before I was really clear about what kind of games I wanted to play. Since most of my games seem to be set around the Mediterranean and Black Sea areas, I wanted to brighten the tiles and make them more arid-looking.
I also didn't want the typical ‘just grass’ wargames table. I started with a bunch of very monotonous grass-green tiles but now I have a set with more variety. Here is the full 6' x 4' setup (the static grass on the left looks weirdly bright because I took the photos before the glue had set):
When the PVA had set, I sealed the ballast and flock with a layer of thinned PVA (about one-part PVA to two-parts water). I left them under a tarp while they were drying, otherwise that little rat-bastard in the corner would have vomited on them…
They look a bit ‘griddy’ and modular at first…
…but they look OK when you get some scenery on top of them:
Comments
Post a Comment