Desert Island Discs... A terrain WIP

Well, I guess if you are going to play some pirate themed games, you're going to need a desert island for them to bury their treasure on!

Many moons ago I had planned on doing one of these, but as usual, distraction by other games led me astray...

Our recent pirate shenanigans using both LotHS rules and EotD rules, elicited a comment from Dave, that I should make a desert isle, so the idea was resurrected... so I'm blaming you for this Dave! ;-)

I thought afterwards I could perhaps also try having a small garrison there of Gondorians or Fiefdom troops for LOTR, and have them try and repel a raid by Corsairs of Umbar! One of the great things about some terrain pieces is its multiple uses! :-)

These guys might finally get an outing too!

I had a left over 4' x 4' x 2" poly sheet, which I took the bread knife to and hacked into it 4 landing sites, which will lead down to beaches, and then hacked in a rocky coastline around the rest.

Yes I know, desert islands are not normally 'square', but I was trying to maximize the playing area for our prospective games...

Having got cut out the general isle shape, I went and got a sheet of 12mm thick MDF. I decided to go thick to try and minimize any warping from using the PVA glue, to glue the poly sheet to it...

I used the poly sheet as a rough template, drew round it, and then set the jigsaw over at as much of an angle as it would go, and cut out a matching shape, allowing extra space all around...

I then used a chisel and tenon saw to further reduce the angle of the beach. I am trying to make terrain, that when you put figures on it, they don't fall over - one of my pet hates!

So we ended up with this...

I then turned it over and applied several strips of duct tape, across the back, along the edges, to again further try and reduce any warping... I hate warping too!

Once all done, I flipped it back over and glued on the poly sheet with PVA. Weighted down with all those spare rule books and history books - they always come in useful for something! ;-)

I then got some off cuts of dense poly foam, and tore it into varying sized pieces with my fingers, then glued these round the perimeter cliffs... several pics below so you can see what I mean:

I left this to dry fully over night. If I have any spare time tomorrow, I'll set to, skim coating all the rocky bits and cliff surfaces with polyfilla.

Once finished the Isle will sit directly on the painted sea surface on my gaming table top... so there will be space to have ships alongside...

While that was done and drying I decided to make a ford section to go with my existing river pieces. I am just about up to the Flight to the Ford scenario, in my Fellowship of the Ring campaign with Chris, so felt this would be a must. 5mm MDF sheet, cut to shape. Some cardboard strips covered in sand textured paint for river banks, and some red lentils for pebbles and river stones in the ford itself. The laborious bit was placing each in turn, rounded side up...

Once that was done, it was left to dry...

Finally on the terrain front for today... I decided to redo my hills. I made a heap ages ago with a polystyrene ceiling tile cutter, but the mouth of the cutter was fairly small, meaning the angle I could cut the poly at was not the best... hence the miniatures falling over problem, so I resolved to fix that and got the bread knife out again and hacked down the hills sides to gentler slopes, and sanded smooth, so the figures wont keep falling over...

Far more figure friendly - I just have to repaint and re-flock them know... a job for tomorrow if the hobby shop has any static grass in stock...

So that was today's terrain effort... might get round to a spot of painting later this evening...

The weather was not the best today, so no guilty feelings being in all day and the kids were out at a friends birthday party, so that was cool too! Sometimes you have to grab opportunities in time when you can!