Second second board

 New installement in my second attempt of building boards for Underworlds!

I had quite a clear idea of what I wanted, so the first steps were more or less pretty straightforward. First thing, put the two half-boards together. I glued them to another MDF surface:

Here we go again!

In case you wonder, I of course could have used only the below MDF piece, but having the laser cut hexes is an enormous time saver, so it all was quite a no brainer for me. This approach came with its own setbacks, but I'll get to that later. For now let's just move forward. I wanted this board to have a rod as main element, so I just made it with DAS clay:

It could be a river, but it's a road, trust me

I used a roll pin to provide texture, nothing too complicated:

Walls, floors or roads are all the same to me!

And then I just marked the hex grid on the road:

There are tiles in the tiles

With this, I could say that I had the main element in place. From now on it all was a matter of embellishment. I knew this was the best moment to bring these beauties back:

As first seen here

I wasn't sure of what exactly to use, but here you have my first take:

I would change my mind later on, but you get the idea

As I told you before, making these boards stackable is a must. It's my true priority. So any sign or any other piece of scenery could not be excessively high or, if that wasn't possible, then it had to be removable.

So the signs were to be added on a game by game basis, I just made room for two of them and that's all. Apart from that, I wanted to use some ruins. I had these Age of Sigmar pillars, which I cut at maybe 1cm high. I then provided the same heighth for any other element on the board, ensuring that another board could be stacked just on top on this one when storaged:

Better explained here. I have four support bits of the same heighth

But this is how it's going to look when gaming

Well, let's get dirty! Some sand and gravel...

This is where you have to rememeber to not cover the grid!

Oh, by the way. Cutting the pillars away is quite a [redacted] of a job. I thought I could press mould the pice for the future:

The hole on the top is to make the upper piece fit in there

Unfortunately, I didn't take the right precautions and I broke the mould on the first piece... and had already glued the orginal bits on the board. So I may have to repeat the experience to see if I can get it right, I hope it will spare me quite some time in the long term.

Let's splash some browns on that board:

Well, all the browns you have. Don't be shy

Now let's tone it down a little:

Ugly wasteland

I painted some puddles and the Wyrdstone I use to indicate the starting tiles in the game. Here you can finally get a proper idea of the board I had first envisioned:

Still ugly and still a wasteland

In order to make it coherent with the first board I already had, I added some grass:

I also partially covered the road, to show the decay and so

Some flock, small branches as fallen trees and tiny leaves

I guess there's nothing else to add, just have a look at the finished board, ready to have a game on it:

It's almost the same pic as above. Spot the four differences!

A few close-ups. There's one thing I regret, I should have added some more variety on the slabs of the road, as I've done other times. I wanted to get the board done and move on, but it bugs me. I may have to repaint them so there are some more colours and not just plain broken white

Anyway, it serves its purpose

The signs are painfully Warhammerical

This is how a game will eventually look like!!

A general overview of the finished thing:

 I also have to paint the edge of the board. It really looks awful this way.

 So now I have two boards! Though limited in my options, I can have a game again!

Oops, what's happening here?

Here you can see the issue I mentioned at the beginning. After having glued the two half-boards to the MDF large piece underneath, I experienced some serious warping. I've been cautious, as I don't want to break the board now, but I've learnt that I need to use less glue or to explore other solutions. Anyway, as I said, this is finally game-ready:

I really want to make the real thing

Finally, the relevant issue. How flat is actually the board?

I can work with this. Now these are stackable

I think I can build the other two boards and still be able to storage them, which is really a concern for me. If you are willing to follow me on this adventure, just stay tuned!