Boarding a new project

 New crazy project starting now!

I have to admit that I've been working on this for some time, and my original plan was to have the whole project finished before I posted it all, but in the end I've decided to show the first part of it.

If you look back in the archives of this blog (or you've been over here long enough and have a real good memory), you'll see that back in the day I built a full 3D board for Shadespire, as I don't really enjoy playing on cardboard if I can avoid it.

I keep on talking about Shadespire and not Underworlds, because in fact I've never got the other games. That's why I took my chances and went 3D on it. Of course I wouldn't be able to storage full 3D boards for all Underworld Seasons, so I focused only on one. Given my number of games per year, it looks reasonable.

The thing is that, speaking of storage, my boards posed quite a problem. I simply couldn't make them fit in any shelf, wardrobe or whatever. So I had to make a difficult decision... and let them go.

I didn't have to put an Elsa costume on or sing let it go or anything, so it was easier than you think. I made a donation to a local club and moved on.

But moving on means... that I need a new version of the boards, but this time making them stackable! Right, of course it's the only reasonable thing I could do, why do you ask?

I need them to be fairly threedimensional, yet flat enough to allow storage. So with this conundrum I started my Shadespire.V2...

Here I go, again on my own...

The first setback I had to face is that the company that produced the boards I used the first time had unfortunately ran out of business. After some research, I concluded that my only choice was a shop called Customeeple, that produced hexed boards fit for the game. The only issue is that... they don't provide a single MDF piece, but two halves!! Right. Go see the pic above again and you'll get what I'm saying.

OK, some extra work, but still doable. I glued a reinforcement below and those hexes on top. Now I have a solid structure. Now let's think of the 3D aspect of it.

...going down the only road I've ever known...

That's the top height I was comfortable to afford. I provided five support points with the same height. So anything I stack over this board will keep horizontal. I checked several times, trust me :D

Well, let's add some salty details. As in my previous iteration, I'm marking the starting positions on the board with crystals; or more properly speaking, Wyrdstone. What can I say, I'm still oldschool. I added some skulls and rocks too, for some warhammerical ambientation.

No element can get higher than the five designated support points

Time for texture. Just DAS putty:

No need to cover everything, you just need to give an impression of an irregular field

Then I added sand, fine gravel and stuff

The same, but in the sunlight

The areas without sand will be some puddles, as this board will look like some puny marshes or something. Now it was time for some colour. I have only one trick here: throw all you have on the board!

You can't have enough tones of brown. Mix and try everything

After proper drybrushing to provide some homogeneisation, I painted the puddles. I had some doubts here. I should have painted them brownish, but then there wouldn't be any kind of visual contrast and it all would be too dull. So I sacrificed realism for conventionalism, and settled for blues.

Dirty blues, with a lot of greens and browns

OK. But for now the board looks like a weird desert. All that water calls for at least some grass...

So some grass it is!

With some true natural daylight

The same, but inside, so you can compare

I also added some bushes here and there

You may have been asking what are those three weird sticks on a row supposed to represent. Well, my intention was to have an old fence all shattered. All these pieces come from a Renedra kit.

I hope they finally make sense!

Let's have a look at the whole board:

Finally coming along

I mean, I could totally play here

I would ordinarily declare this board finished. But not today. I have a confession to make. I had been collecting falling leaves during all the Autumn, and using this puncher by Green Stuff World:

It can get repetitive, but the results are worth of it

The good thing of going out with the kids is that no one will judge you if they see you collecting hundreds and hundreds of leaves. I guess that seeing a bearded adult doing the same might look a little more weird. But I have also done it though.

I mean, I need a lot of leaves.

I know what you did last Autumn

I'm not showing the final bag I ended up with because it's ridiculously big even for me XD

Now it comes the time to apply the leaves on the board!

One by one, with a tiny drop of superglue

I even wanted to add more, but I had no sanity points left for it

You may probably come with an easier solution, but in the end this method worked for me, as it gave me full control of what I was doing and had no leaves unglued whatsoever.

Just a close-up

And again, an outdoors shot of the board, now definitely finished

This is what playing on it will look like

Final shot

I'm trying to find a balance between an hexed board (where you can actually see the hexes and have no misleadings about the tile your mini is on) and a natural, visually appealing display. I'm learning a lot and will definitely bring some of these techniques to future boards.

But for now what can I say? One done, three more to go! I don't know when will I start the second one, but I think I have some ideas of what I want to do...