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??

Honestly, 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!