As there has been some interest in how I built my modular (isomorphic) terrain boards, here's a little guide.
TerraformingCut 1cm thick styrofoam boards with a hot blade into A4 size sheets and glued them with white glue onto 1mm thick A4 sized wooden sheets, just to provide a little support and prevent breaking.
Then measured the center point of a number of boards to draw rivers of 4cm width. Used a lighter and a soldiering iron to melt river beds, creeks, ditches, lakes and rolling terrain into the foam. Beware to protect your lungs! And beware that the styrofoam shrinks when heated up, so keep an eye on warping boards. The wood sheets are not strong enough to prevent that. Finally glued on some hills with white glue.
Color codingPainted all boards in the same brown I use for my miniatures' bases.
By the rivers of AnytownGlued down bird sand and fine sand into the river beds, creeks and lakes with thinned down white glue.
All roads lead to the same pointDrybrushed the water features with tones of blue and green.
Then marked the edges where the roads meet on each side of the boards and glued them on using fine sand on thinned down white glue.
Isomorphic is keyThis creates isomorphic terrain boards which can freely be arrange in any modular fashion. There is only one point where a road runs into the swampy area next to the fortress and not all river boards can be used freely, obviously. Otherwise they all fit together.
The green, green grasUsed thinned down white glue to put on fields with static gras and two colors of fine turf. Later added another color of fine turf for normal gras. I glued on one type of turf at a time, doing two layers as one didn't cover the glue properly, enabling me to put the exess back into the jar.
Where the trees grow oldGlued on hedges, bushes, trees and woods using clump-foliage on plain white glue.
Spray and spumeTo fix it all in place, I sprayed all boards with thinned down white glue and dusted it with isopropanol to make sure there were no bubbles and that the glue would properly penetrate into the turf and foliage. Beware that the moisture can make the wood sheets warp!
The sticky white stuffI masked the river beds with tape, thinned down acrylic "clear water" by AMMO with water and applied it into the lakes, creeks, ditches and rivers using a large syringe. As you can see on the following pictures, though, it didn't self-level, nor turn clear as it should have. I am not sure if it should have been exposed to UV-light while drying, but the package didn't indicate it, so I left them in the dark basement to dry.
A gaze upon the battlefieldFields and orchards around a large estate.
A fortress city at a swampy river. This could be a proxy for Ratisbon or Mantua.
The creeks run through the hilly countryside.
Besides the milky and bumpy rivers I am very happy about the outcome and flexibility this approach provides. Now I need to figure out how to fix the water features. Hoping that it might just need more time to properly dry and clear up.
Let me know what you think and whether you have experience with building modular terrain boards.
Topic: DIY 2mm/3mm terrain boards (Read 700 times)