Some Terrain

NOTE: I recently revisited MEST Fantasy Gladiator with my nephew. He is definitely getting better at the tactics. Just a short 4-Turn battle between myself, him, and my brother. We each received 4 characters.

Overview

The Fantasy Gladiator genre set that I have is 1:18 scale where in each figurine is 90MM tall or about 3.5-inches in height. At present this is my principal ad hoc demo set for new-comers. I've used this set at my workplaces for the past 6 years ... works marvels because the figures are large! However, I created the set with very little terrain except for 12 pillars. The idea was to keep everything simple.

Well, I've learned that with more figures there's probably going be a need for more terrain. Especially if the demo set becomes a competition game. And so, I've built more.

Process

Here's my process!

I purchases this foam board from Lowes. It is about 1-inch thick about 4 by 8 feet in dimensions and sells for about $8.00 USD. You'll need to peel that "R-Tech" plastic from the front, and a similar but gray foil from the back. Otherwise paint won't stick to it.

This was my Christmas gift to myself. About $120 USD. Cut the big foam boards into smaller squares and rectangles. The ruler you see at the top allows for precision cuts of consistent dimension.

You will need this hot-wire knife to create details in your foam, and to carve out gashes and scratches. This is a lot easier than when I used as hot wire gun.

So, I cut out a bunch of square and rectangular tiles. I stacked them together and started using the hot-wire knife to cut shapes into the tiles. You can see the crazy gray foil that still sticks to the foam board.

More creative stacking. You may notice that I have some MDF boards I use as the base. I got these cut a few years back. I think places such as Lowes and Ace Hardware (both in the USA) will cut MDF for you. Otherwise you'll need to get a circular saw because MDF is hard to cut with a blade.

I tried to create step-like layouts. I figure that maybe I can use these finished projects with both my 1:18 figures and with my 28MM figures. Why not, right?

More of the same. Some interesting gaps for the smaller figures to move about.

Once I have the shapes hot-glued into place, I need to add some interesting texture. I use sand and white glue for this. BTW, I discovered that you can purchase jugs of white-glue for very cheap. I highly recommend this.

You can see that the sand and glue chunked up a bit. Bah. Not a problem.

What I did afterwards when the glue dried is that I revisited each piece and added another layer of white-glue as a sealant. This allows the remainder of the sand to be locked into place. It also creates a smoother surface for when I paint.

These walls have a base-coat of dark brown. I did a thin black wash afterwards when the brown dried.

The foreground is essentially done. The background walls need a dry-brush of white.

When I dry brush, I use a lighter brown across the entire face with a 2-inch brush. I then use a 1-inch brush  with pure white for dry-brushing corners and edges.