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Modular Terrain Tutorial: Part 2

By April 7, 2015September 16th, 2017Miniatures Games, Videos

If you’ve got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn’t prove it.

The epic modular terrain tutorial series continues with the creation of some feature tiles and some heavy-duty texturing.

Making custom terrain is not for the faint-hearted, as you’ll notice as we continue on this adventure together into modular terrain construction. This time I cover the creation of a few feature tiles including a yawning fissure in the earth, a monolith-framed road, and a huge sculpted cliff. Then we get down and dirty with the texturing: sifting and gluing clay and placing rocks until all nine tiles are drying in the sun and ready for the next step—painting!

6 Comments

  • razide says:

    Your terrain tiles are really coming along nicely.
    You could almost get away with only having to paint your big bark rock formations in this landscape.
    Great hint about sifting the clay bases by size.

    I’d really need to restrain myself with the small-medium rocks otherwise I’d end up with a lot of areas where the big base HellDorado figures would be toppling over.

    Will you be using some of your existing scenery elements with these tiles or are you intending to create some specifically for this board ?

    Any plans for “water features” in some of those crevasses ? If you used a few layers of PVA glue to raise the levels in them it would be easier to retrieve anything that falls in and also you could model some treasure at the bottom of the pool.

    I can hardly wait for your next installment and examples of tile placement variations.

    • Good questions! Yes, it’s important to remember that these have to be practical surfaces for gaming, so don’t too much extra texture. Even adding a few small rocks to a featureless tile can restrict its use, meaning that scatter terrain can’t sit flat on the tile.

      At the moment I’ll be using some of my existing scatter terrain, as I don’t want to restrict my options too much. Again, it’s a gaming board, not a display board. I’m planning to add another 7 tiles to expand this to a 4×4′ area, and I’ll just make those flat. In fact one will be a 2×2′ tile I can plonk in the middle. There’s no reason to restrict yourself to 1×1′ tiles, you could even make 1×2′ size ones, for example.

      I may move on to water/lava features later down the track. Those kind of ‘below ground level’ features are ideal for these thick insulation foam tiles, after all.

      One day, it may even become 6×4′! Of course storing them is a pain.

  • 7 says:

    Can’t wait for part 3. Love all the work you do

  • Will Belford says:

    The ingenuity and sheer amount of effort involved is mind-bending, but they look amaaaaaazing. My Wrath of Kings figures are going to feel right at home on these babies!

  • pagan8th says:

    Time is one of those things that no matter how much you have, more is always needed.

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