Modern Urban Board Build

The Design

This is the original design for the game board. The board measures 90 * 90cm total. The intended use is a variant of the Tribal rules set - Threnody.

Threnody builds on the base Tribal rules as well as the Primeval and Brutal supplements. It adds rules for clairvoyance and the spirits of the departed in an attempt to build a setting suitable for world of The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon.

The design goes for a slightly off diagonal layout to avoid movement being too linear during game play. I also have attempted to have several different types of area to maximise the ability to use the board alone to tell stories.

• A commercial are with a mini-mart and carpark
• A high density residential block with a community allotment
• A church and it's grounds
• A upper class area with a private home, park and a constructions site for a new home or extension

Progress Log

October 1st, 2022

The frame of the board was built over the public holiday weekend. The base is 6mm MDF with 30mm battening around the edges. This is to provide rigidity and to protect the XPS foam used to bulk out the raised areas of the board.

The roads are thin layers of scrap expanded polystyrene with sheets of self adhesive cork over the top to provide texture. I have tried to scratch up the road surface a little to better represent a well travelled city road. I suspect more could have been done, as well as trying to add cracks to help hide the edges of the sheets better.

Once the base ground work was laid out, I covered the entire board with a mix of PVA glue and acrylic paint to help seal and protect it.

A layer of dusty brown grout was laid down on the construction site to represent the bare soil. I have also carved out a little of the foam then lined with sculptamold to make the pond in the park.

October 9th, 2022

The raised garden beds a carved scraps of XPS, coated grout. The beds where glued down and then coated with PVA glue to ensure the grout stuck.

Some Vallejo Pigments was used to intensify the brown of the raised beds to make them look more like they were constructed with well composted soil. A little bean pole frame built from cocktail sticks was added for some height and variety.

I painted the bottom of the pond an almost black colour fading towards a lighter brown/green as it reaches the top. Then poured in the first layer of resin. The resin was coloured with a little blue, brown and green inks. I didn't pour the whole thing in one go as I want to be able to place plant and animals in the pond at different layers so they appear as part of the landscape.

You can see here where I laid down a base colour for the road, and then painted over a mix of black and white pigments to give it a bit more of a weathered, dusty appearance. Once dried it was sealed with a matt varnish.

October 15th, 2022

Just finished the bulrushes for the pond. The reed part was created with Woodland Scenics realistic field grass. The flower stalks are made with painted piano wire, using a couple of layers of tacky PVA glue to make the heads.

October 23th, 2022

First set of vegetables for the high-rise community garden are coming together with this bean pole frame will assorted beans and peas climbing up an over it. These were fun to make with a core of jewellery wire which was sprayed with contact adhesive and then sprinkled with a foam flock. The was done a couple of times to build up layers. I also mixed it up with some 2mm static grass and purple flock to represent flowers. Hopefully this gives them a little variety.

November 13th, 2022

I've been focused on some of the miniatures for Threnody over the last few weeks, but got back into the board today with the road markings. I spent the last few days paying attention to the road markings around the area I live and trying to find specification online. I did managed to find some specification but they didn't seems to match up with what I was seeing. What they did point to was a ratio of 1:3 white line to spacing. Since I am not going for 100% accuracy I opted to just maintain this ratio and did 10mm white line to 30mm space. With a 60mm solid line leading up to an intersection.

The original plan was to using masking tape to lay it all out and then stipple on the white paint. This would have taken ages and I've never been lucky with masking tape. I always end up lifting some of the paint underneath it. Instead I found a video by Kathy Millatt in which she uses a road marking pen from Woodland Scenics. I don't have those markers but I do have access to a bunch of Posca paint pens. The PC-1MR precision tipped pen worked well, even on uneven surfaces. The more felt-tip type points tended to splatter a little. If you haven't seen any of Kathy Millatt's videos it's definitely worth while. She comes from a model train background and is super good on the details of scenery and by extension terrain. She has more recently also started doing a lot more dioramas too.

November 17th, 2022

The pond is done! Well, probably. The remainder was filled with epoxy resin coloured with a little blue, brown and green ink. The few loose leaves were added as it was poured and the geese stuck around the pond. Some on the bank and some partially submerged. I think it would look a little better if at least one of the geese was placed in the middle of the pond. So perhaps I'll print and paint up some more.

After the resin had fully set, some glazing medium was spread over the top and an airbrush used to swirl it around to give the whole thing a bit of movement.

Note to self: the field grass used for the bulrushes is highly flammable. So make sure you protect it when bursting bubbles on the resin surface with a blow torch. There was a little damage, but not too bad.

February 13th, 2023

Whilst I realise that this is a war gaming board - so there are some simplifications and abstractions. I am also want to make it feel a bit more lived in. So I have been working on adding flavour. For example take this rubbish bin where I've added a tiny soft drink can with some content spilled out.

I've also been painting up some pigeons - because what city is complete without some greedy little pigeons.

March 4th, 2023

Things have not been idle, instead the focus has been on populating the world with character - that is printing and painting miniatures. Here are some of the colourful individuals who will be part of the world I am building. Firstly her are some of the syndicate voyants. I had a little fun with a fluorescent as you can see in the eyes of the cat (who bears a striking resemblance to my cat Sushi ) and those of the berserker in the middle.

But we cannot have a criminal syndicate without a suitable oppressive police force. So here are some shots of the Underguards who oppose them:

March 17th, 2023

Yesterday I got back into the board build, focusing on allotment that sits next to the high-rise. Previously it has some raised beds made of foam and covered in coloured grout, and some bean poles. Otherwise it looked pretty sparse. So it was time to start layering up ground cover. I started with a liberal scattering of Scrublands Base Ready from Geek Gaming Scenics, who if you are not familiar with, has produces years worth of excellent tutorials on scenery building for war gaming on his YouTube Channel. This gave me a nice earthy texture with a smattering of green. It sieved out most of the large bits for this. Adding some of them back in by hand. This was all sealed down with watered down PVA glue (with a little isopropyl alcohol) and left to dry. I then used a thin layer of neat PVA in patches and my cheap and nasty static grass applicator to lay down another layer over the top. Finally, because this is an allotment not a neatly trimmed suburban lawn, some clumping foam was added in strategic areas to represent little bushes. It also helps blend in transition between the different layers.

And again, with some miniatures that have recently been completed.