Board!

Now, I'm nothing if not awkward. The moment my colleague, Chris (check out his blog here), finished building a Ghost Archipelago board for shows and conventions, I was struck with a bug to do some terrain building too...

I'd got hold of a load of GF9's Battlefield in a Box badlands terrain a while back (a couple of years, judging by the dust on the boxes), and had never done anything with them. The main reason for this was the colour - a dark brownish-red. It just didn't go with the boards we had at the time, or with the games we were playing. Having been inspired by some of the forthcoming Ghost Archipelago material, I revisited the terrain I had, and looked to finally do something with it.

First stop was my local homewares store, where I found a doormat in what turned out to be almost perfect colours. It's not too fluffy, so figures sit on it perfectly, and has a rubber back, so it lies nice and flat. Sure, it lacks the texture of printed wargaming mats, but it's going to be covered in terrain anyway. Total size is about 2.8ft x 3ft, so not quite square, but bang in the ballpark for the scale of games I like playing.

The various rocks and bluffs from the badlands range had a bit of static grass added, and were then varnished. That's it. There are a few chips in the resin that I should probably have spotted and touched up beforehand, but... meh. They're barely visible from any kind of distance.

All told, it's not bad, even if it needs a lot more jungle terrain to give it some pop before it's finished. The huts are also from GF9, though I'm less keen on them - they're just so big (the largest is about the same height as the tallest of the bluffs!). It'll also work nicely for Wild West, SF or Post-Apoc games with the addition of some appropriate structures.