Slabford

 I'm trying something different today. Something larger than my usual stuff. For quite some time I've been wanting to improve my gaming surfaces. I've tried a couple of textured mats, but what I'm really after is something with gentle slopes and small hills, permanent vegetation... you know, something that feels a little more like actual terrain.

I've just got a chance to experiment on a reasonably manageable surface. I had this white board lying around that I no longer had any use for, so I thought "hmmm... could I give it a try...?" 

90 x 60 cm, roughly 36 x 24 "

Not a huge surface, admittedly, but it could work nicely for small skirmishes. I've got nothing to lose. Victory is for those who dare.

The first issue was the board itself. It's pretty thin and, although not significantly warped (well, only a little), it did have a tendency to wobble.  I was hoping to solve that by adding some foam hills: 

My first time using this material. Still a lot to learn

I shaped it into a small valley, with a hill in the centre and four raised corners. All four are flat and exactly the same height for a reason (which you will eventually discover). I tried to strike a balance between slopes and flat areas because, after all, this is a gaming surface. I need the minis to actually stand up!

The hills didn't fit perfectly because of the slight warping and the raised edge of the board. I fixed it with some putty and (this is where things got risky) with strips of paper. This way I got the gaps between the board and the foam covered while also (hopefully) leaving enough flexibility to absorb any wobbling. 

Yes, you know I'm an optimistic by nature

 

Well... it seems to be holding. Time to get dirty. PVA glue and sand. Sand everywhere. Mostly on the board, but this stage can get messy.

Be sure to sweep the floor properlyafterwards

The sand gets definitely sealed with paint:
 

Now it looks like Mordor

When it's all dry, I gave a drybrush coat over all the surface, and also painted the river. Greens and browns with slight turquoise, but never blue.

Not Mordor anymore. Maybe the transition towards Minas Morgul

You may have noticed I didn't texture the four corners. Trust me, it's all part of the plan.

Now it's time for the grass! I finally turned the board green, just as I'd imagined it from the start. I left a narrow path running through the terrain, with a ford across the stream. Right next to the crossing I placed a small flat stone I picked up on the beach this summer. I painted it and, being quite a sizeable slab at 28mm scale, I thought it would make a perfect natural landmark. Travellers and locals would quite naturally end up calling this particular river crossing "Slabford". And somehow the name stuck in my head. Slabford it is.

 For the raised corners I used some grass tuft sheets by (by MIG). They are smooth and look surprisingly natural; I'd had them lying around for ages, just waiting for an opportunity like this!

Now it's looking different, isn't it?

The next step was to start crowding the board with bushes, tufts and all sorts of vegetation. That helped bring in some extra colour and gave the whole thing a late-summer, early-autumn feel, which I really enjoy. Apart from that, I applied Vallejo Still Water effect to the stream. First time using this stuff too, I'm going full experimental with this board, as you can see. I'm trying all sorts of new products, techniques and ideas. I don't really mind too much whether everything works or not, as I'm more interested in the process and in learning from it. Well, obviously I'll be happier if it all works, but you know what I mean.

 

I used the tufts to cover the joints between the sheets on the corners and the regular grass

I think at this point I could probably call it a day (well... "a day") and declare the board finished. But I actually spent several more days adding another layer of water effect every night, trying to bring the surface up to the slightly raised edge of the board. 

I really didn't match it perfectly, but couldn't pour litres of this thing!

Oh, and of course, this board was asking for a few trees, wasn't it?

NOW it is finished

"But trees will make storage complicated", I hear you say. Of course, of course. That's why I magnetised them:

Note to self: larger trees need larger magnets. These ones barely hold

I made small holes in the chosen spots and glued the magnets in place. The only thing you really need to watch out for is polarity, of course. You want the trees to stick there, not launch themselves away in disgust!

For small trees I simply glued the other magnet to the bottom of the trunk

Keeping the polarity consistent makes all the trees interchangeable. I mean, I designed the board with the larger trees in mind for the hills and the smaller ones for the banks of the stream. But since all the magnets are the same size, I can put the big trees down by the river too:

This configuration also makes sense

If (when) I ever do this again on a future board, I'll have to give the whole magnet-size issue a bit more thought. But for now, I'm leaving this one as it is, even with the slightly precarious big trees. In the next pic you can see two big trees down by the river:

Extra points if you spot the two spiders

Well, this is it! It was mainly an experiment to see wether I could build a functional board and to learn what works and what doesn't. I admit it won't be hosting any huge battles, but I'll definitely be using it for skirmishes. At 90x60 cm, it's more than enough for most of my modest little games, and I hope it'll also be a good way to get the kids properly into wargaming. Just let me show a few pics of what I intend to do:

Small scenery pieces will fit in, and there's plenty of space for gaming

Slopes and gravel still allow minis to stand up

Oh, of course it can serve for sci-fi purposes, not only fantasy games:

I wouldn't dare to use larger buildings, but this is more than enough

The ford is well delimited for gaming purposes, I hope

Oh, and of course the kids have already started to pew-pew these days while I was pouring layers and layers of water effect:

Pew pew at its most

We all got caught quite into it

OK. By now I feel I owe you an explanation for my obsession with the four corners of the board. TThey're all the same height. They're definitely not very high. And they have no sand on them, just soft, fluffy tufts. All of which means I can simply flip the whole board over and get a new flat surface on the other side.

A new gaming surface??

HHonestly, I'm not even sure it'll be possible to do anything useful with the white side. But that hypothesis remains to be disproven.

Could I simply prime the whole thing grey and turn it into an urban board for Adeptus Titanicus? Would paint even stick to this surface? Could I glue down cobblestone sheets or something similar and turn it into a small Mordheim-style board?

I haven't really given the idea that much thought yet. But the point is that, at the very least, I now have the option to find out what can actually be done with it.

In the pic below you can see how the soft corners keep the board from scratching or damaging the table: 

As said before, fluffy and soft

In the end I have to say the whole thing turned out better than I expected. At the beginning I wasn't expecting much success at all. The slight warping and wobbling made me fear the worst, and I was fully prepared to declare the experiment a failure and move on, but once I saw that everything was actually holding together, I grew more and more confident, and now I can say I'm quite happy with the result.

That said, I'm not sure I'd dare try the same thing with a larger white board (of course I've already thought of that!!). This works well enough at this size, but with the board itself being so thin, I suspect warping would become a much more serious problem on a larger surface.

For now, though, I have a gaming board, the kids and I are happy with it, and I even managed to finish it in time for one final entry for Dave's Season of Scenery 2026! This is a win in my book!

A few Discworld characters

 While I'm working on another scenery project, I've been using odd bits of spare time here and there to paint a batch of minis I recently got from a friend.

I'd never really planned on getting any Discworld minis, but these came my way and I simply couldn't refuse!

 They are from the Micro Art Studio ranges  and they are absolutely everything you can hope for from a Discworld mini. The sculpts really catch all the spitit of Paul Kidby's artwork and take you straight to the pages of the novels, can't praise them enough.

These are the old metal ones, though I believe they're now produced in resin or as 3D prints. I can't say anything about the new versions, but these were perfect: no mould lines, no issues at all, just ready to paint.

I take it everyone is familiar with Discworld, but in the unlikely event you are not, please reevaluate your priorities in life and go get the books. Please do.

No, I mean it, this post can wait. Go read the books. Like, now. I'll be waiting.

...

Oh, you're back. Good, good. Now we can proceed.

First of all our favourite wizzard:

How can the sculpt alone convey that look of despair in his eyes, even before you've painted him?

 Of course if we have Rincewind, we must have the Luggage:

Greatest smile of all times. And places

 Now another key character, the Librarian of the Unseen University, or as he would put it:

Ooook

 I only have another one, but I think it's a FAVOURITE OF EVERYONE.

OF COURSE YOU KNEW WHO I WAS TALKING ABOUT

SQUEAK

And that's it! These are the only ones I got, but I love the whole range so much that I may well have a little peek at the Micro Art Studio shop in the future.

Here they are together for a group shot:

Don't you feel as though they're already telling a story?

As you can see, I went for a pretty straightforward paint job, but I think it suits them and works well enough. And now, with that happy little feeling you get from actually completing a small project, I can focus on the scenery project again.

Well, as much as I can focus on anything.

Hopefully I'll be able to show you that one shortly!

Multi purpose 40K thematic scenery

I'm back with more scenery, but 40K oriented this time. Well, I believe you had already guessed that by the title!

It comes from the Kill Team Moroch box, I got it second-hand from a friend who only wanted the minis. Though I have seen these pieces mostly in grey, I chose to tie them with my weathered white and orangre previous stuff, and then this is what I got.

I'm not really sure of the purpose of this first building. Is it a missile silo? A cargo bay? Whatever it is, I gave it the usual treatment. It looks really battered... 

It's so big that it doesn't fit anywhere! Gasp!

Let's get a side view

 Next one looks like some kind of auxiliary building. Not a bunker, more like an industrial facility:

Well, a bunkerized industrial facility

I love how crowded of details these kits are. Pads and gauges everywhere. Not sure of what their function is, as they are placed in quite odd places, but they look nice anyway.

Besides, leaving some windows open allows proper ventilation and good neighbour relations

Next piece is what I understand must be a relay antenna:

Tricky to photograph!

I made top antenna detachable for storage purposes!

This can serve as a radar or as a death ray, I'll let you decide. Anyway, it looks cool on a board, if not very functional.

If it doesn't work as a death ray, at least will give you tetanus

The last piece is a pad. Though I thought of adding it to the industrial building on a single big base, like some sort of farm, it presented some storage issues, so I let it this way:

I need a flock of groxes. I really do

 It comes in separate walls and corners, so it gives some modularity:

I know, I know, bigger backdrop. But that's A3 sized!

 A good thing about these elements is that they are stackable to some point, giving you some gaming options:

What a bulk

Not sure if any of these make sense, but anyway

These have been fun to do, even if the excess of details brought me as much joy as despair (ah, the cables! Cables and wires everywhere!). However, I think I have quite a bunch of elements to fill any board!

 

I'm seriously committed to Dave Stone's Season of Scenery, and I'm already working on a final, larger... thing. You'll see what I'm talking about in the upcoming weeks!

Countryside scenery

 Before I get back to large projects, I thought it was a good time to get some small stuff done. Some time ago my friend Hetairoi handed me this tiny chapel by Tabletop World. As they have released a new model, which he got too, he had no use for the old one:

So now I have a chapel!

My recipe on this kind of stone (as I tried on my Gondor Mansion earlier this year) is priming a light grey all over and then painting random stones with different colours and hues:

You can go wild with them

Now that I was starting the chapel, I also painted this set of stone walls by Reconquer Designs:

A bunch of stones

It's a medieval stone pen, but it's completely modular, so it can be used as a stone wall (as you'll see later!)

Sooo different colours! No need to be shy, you can use almost any colour as long as it looks natural

Just use any earthy colours

Even if you think they won't match

After that, I gave a Nuln wash all over. This helps to make the slabs and stones stand out and it gives the whole thing better definition.

The same but darker

And better defined

Don't worry, the stones won't look out of place, as now it's time for a grey drybrush, that will get all suitably equal. After the drybrush I added some watered down dark green wash on the lower part, to give the impression of humidity retained on the stone through the years.

Looks better now!

So does this!

Now the real party begins! To give the impression of real texture we need some lichen and moss. If you know what you are doing you can go any direction with this. I mean:

 I didn't dare to overdo it. With an old brush I splattered very watered down colours to create irregular stains. Mostly white (a lot!), then different shades of brown and dark green and finally a vivid green:

Final version of the stone. Remember to wash your hands after this

Not as spectacular as the chapel, but the work is the same

Weeeeell. Now it's time for the copper roof. I admit it, first time in my life painting one of this, so I checked quite a lot of pics and videos. I painted all the tiles copper and then added the verdigris: turquoise mixed with light green and a little white. The thing is that I added so much that it in fact covered all the copper! I mean, I guess that's precisely the way it's supposed to be, but I could have saved myself the trouble of painting the metal in the first place!

I mean it!

I'm not that sure about the weathering stage. I went a little crazy with worn out tiles, rusted effects and so. I left it like this, and I don't know wether it's too much:

Needs urgent maintenance!

Anyway, it will serve on my fantasy settings, and dirty buildings will always work there!

Here you have a front pic of the finished building:

Ta-daaa

A close up of the (very corroded!) door:

Please knock gently

I tried a little experiment on the shield on the front. It depicts some sort of patron angel and I wanted it to look really worn and faded, as though the original colours had slowly disappeared after years of exposure to the elements. I applied all the original colours as they were supposed to be, but incredibly watered down, so only a remainder of them are left. It looks more grey-ish and full of lichen, so I guess it more or less gives the impression I wanted:

The poor guy has known better times

The inside is cozy and pretty plain. I painted the book on the altar, but still haven't added any motif to the wall. I was thinking of some small Baroque reredos, but I'm not sure at all.

Need to decorate it!

Oh, BTW...
 

Of course I've been suggested to paint this dierctly on the wall. Hmmmm

Here you can see the chapel with a couple of modern minis, on the 32mm side of  things. So they fit in, this is the standard scale now, for sure.

Bretonnia on steroids

About the stone pen, here you can see it in it's original configuration:

Now I need some flock or something!

But as you can see, it's totally modular, so I can do things like this:

Maybe not the Great Wall, but it works for me!

Note to self: The board has to be incredibly flat to make this work, even the tiniest flock or rubble makes the walls totally unstable.

Well, this is it! A couple of pieces for a number of settings, and they count as an entry for Dave Stone's Season of Scenery! (Hopefully I'll be able to do some more stuff before the deadline, wish me luck!)