Building A Large Terrain Board
by George "Skyhigh" Blouin

Welcome, I have had numerous people ask me what techniques I use when I build the terrain that I use with my gaming group. So, when I took on my latest, greatest and LARGEST terrain project I decided to attempt to chronicle the experience so that other gamers out there who are interested in building their own terrain could see how it is that I do it and maybe gain some new ideas for themselves. Following is essentially a step-by-step description of how I have built a large 8' x 8' terrain board for use at GenCon 2003.

The Project:

For GenCon 2003 the Solaris7 Coalition is putting on a number of charity events including an event called "Ogre's Honor" to honor the passing of Tim "The Ogre" Watson's passing due to complications from colon cancer. "Ogre's Honor" calls for three separate forces, the Swords of Chaos
mercenary unit, Clan Ghost Bear, and a Comstar observing force. There is a potential for approximately 100 mechs to be on the board at one time.

To handle this large of a battle a terrain concept was drawn up by Mike "GuruMike" Stouffer. The original concept for the terrain board was 10' x 10' but I asked if I could downsize it to 8' x 8' for two reasons. First, I
personally can only reach 4' into a board and I am 6'2" and two, the materials I use come in 4' x 8' sheets which makes 8' x 8' easier to achieve then 10' x 10'

Figure 1 shows the original concept for the terrain board as drawn by GuruMike.

Using this as my guide I purchased my materials from Lowe's and began planning how I was going to go about
creating this large board.




 

Material List: 6 - 4' x 8' R-Gard White Expanded Foam Sheets 1 - Hot Wire Cutter 1 - Hot Knife Cutter 1 - 2' Level 1 - Sharpie Permanent Marker 1 - Bottle of Elmer's Glue All

The Beginning a.k.a. Cutting The Shapes:

Because the sheets are 8' tall I went ahead and stood them up next to each other to create the size of the board so that I could draw on the terrain features.

Foam Sheets Standing Ready	Terrain Features drawn onto sheets

It is not very clear but you can make out the drawn lines on the board in the right hand picture. This is the general shape of the hills and the first level of the river that I will be cutting into the terrain.

Following is a quick progression of photos that show the terrain taking shape.

Level 1 River Cut	Level 2 River Cut
Level 3 River Cut	Hills Added

Glue, Glue and More Glue:

Now that each individual level has been cut it is time to peel off the layers of plastic that are on top and bottom of each sheet. Once these
have been peeled off I begin glueing the pieces together. First I glue the top level and second level of the river and wait until those are dry so
that I can go over the edges again with my hot wire cutter and clean up the matching edges. This takes care of any overlap on the levels and melds the edges much closer together.
 

Left Side Glueing	Glued Hills
Board Laid Out	Another View
Third View	Close Up of Hills with Minis

Sectional: Reducing Board for Transport:

Since this board is so large I have to cut it down into 2' x 2' sections so that we can easily transport the board to GenCon. Using my Hot Knife
(wonderful tool worth its weight in gold!) and the 2' level I cut the boards down. Now, I am not a perfect cutter but luckily we are not trying for
modular pieces here...all sections go together only ONE way so that makes my job slightly easier.
 

First Half Cut	Terrain Board Completed

Painting, Flocking and Other
Time Consuming Details:

Now that I've got the board cut into manageable 2' sections it is time to start the painting, flocking and detailing. First I decide to pull all
of the River sections from the stack and start with the painting of the river levels. I will be using three seperate colors of blue to represent the different depths of water.
 

North View of River	South View of River

After completing all of the blue sections of the river I get out the Brown color and start on the edges of the hill sections. Once the brown has dried on the hills I start by painting the top with a green paint and while the paint is still wet I shake on a generous cover of my flocking material (Woodland Scenics Green Blend) and then shake the hill piece from side to side to evenly distribute the flock across the piece...once I feel the piece is well covered I then shake the excess off onto a sheet of newspaper so that I can collect and re-use it.
 

Hill Edges Painted	Small Hill Flocked
Large Hill mostly flocked.	Completed Board

The Details:

Ahh, flocking is now complete. This was the most time consuming part of this project mainly because of the size of the board and each of the
pieces. Something to keep in mind when you are painting and flocking a piece...you ARE going to get paint all over you. =)

Now on to the extra details. In this case I am going to be adding roads to my terrain board following the layout detailed in the original drawing. At my local HobbyTown USA store I found a package of HO gauge model railroad track bed that fit my idea of what I road should look like. The great thing about this stuff is that curves are fairly easy to make as all I had to do was use a pair of scissors to cut V's into the the side of the bed I wanted bent then bend the piece and glue in place.
 

Roads being glued Another Section of Road

The Cost:

I determined that I spent about $100 on the materials alone. I already owned the majority of the tools that I used...and those that I bought I will continue to use so I didn't include them in the cost. The breakdown is something like this: 

Foam: $40        R-Gard from Lowe's or Home Depot.  Pink or Blue would be the same price for 2'x8' versus 4'x8'
Paint: $20        Apple Barrel and Delta Ceramcoat from WalMart
Flock: $20        Woodland Scenics Green Blend (MicroMark Link)
Bridges: $10      Model Railroad plastics (don't have the brand anymore)
Road: $10         HO Gauge Track Bed (Link)

Hot Wire Cutter: Owned       Woodland Scenics Hot Wire cutter (MicroMark)
Hot Knife: Owned                Hot Wire Foam Factory (Site)

The Completed Work:

GuruMike was working on the building area to add to the board so I couldn't get a fully complete shot until GenCon but here are some shots of the completed board and also with the game in progress.

If you have questions about building terrain feel free to post a message on the Miniatures and Terrain board on Solaris7 and myself or others who build their own terrain would be happy to answer them.

George "Skyhigh" Blouin
 

Minis on Board	View of Bridges and Minis
Table Setup	First Moves
Battle Joined	Battle Continuation