Vastarian Terrain Board Part 2

Hi! Long time no see. Sorry for that. Hurricane Baryl did a number on us and it's been a long road to recovery. While I started this blog post almost 4 months ago, glad to see it finished. 

I've moved my Wordpress blog over to Blogger- first and foremost because it is free, but also because Blogger is far more user-friendly. I am sure Wordpress would work out in the end, but I simply don't have enough time to learn the ins and outs of its templates, and kept beansing it. 

Lastly, there has been a resurgence amongst blogs this year - from excellent musings from Ian at Portcullis, Rory up in Alberta and even Mordheim Paul sharing his gaming experiences and thoughts. Even Steve has recently posted a cool battle report! 

You can check them out on my home page under, 'Good Peeps'.

Long live the written word!

In this post I'll be looking at how I further fleshed out my first Vastarian Board. Hopefully someone, somewhere, will get something out of it!

After having completed the main stairwell to the entrance of the church, it was time to start laying the pavers. To do so I did my usual hour or so of cutting out irregular squares of Readiboard dollar store foam, texturing and sanding some stubborn edges. Slightly diluted PVA glue was brushed on, and flagstones laid per usual. In addition some small details were added like streetlights from the Cities of Death kits from 2009 lining the main road, sections of the bulwark from the Imperial Bastion kit to create the front of the cathedral entrance, a drain pipe with wires protruding from the ruined section of the cathedral hill, etc. These would be 'locked in' with my knock-off 'Sculptamold' compound (explained later).

The flagstones cut, tossed around in a shaker full of rocks, and laid out. 

Flagstones laid down

The final layout with poor light.

Complete!

With the raised 3/16" surface of the flagstones, this caused the roads and paths to be elevated. There are typically two ways of doing flagstones - either plasticard/foam ones, or hand-carving with a pen directly into the foam. When you hand-carve, I have found that the stone paths lack depth and character (at least to me), and there is little opportunity to texture the surrounding area. With the 'raised' flagstones, this allowed me to fill in the rest of the board with my home recipe of 'Sculptamold' to allow for depth variation and texture. 

Home Recipe

'Sculptamold' is typically sold for $12-15 per bag, and dries particularly quick

'Sculptamold' is a great tool for quick projects or home DIY school projects. It has a nice consistency, does not require mixing prior to adding water and has a remarkably fast dry time. Unfortunately, it also comes with a hefty price tag and I tend to make mistakes in laying out soil for a terrain board, which make it difficult to go back and fix with this product. 

After a quick google search I found that some enterprising people found the same and decided to come up with their own recipe. You need bags of shredded paper Mache (easily found at, regrettably, Hobby Lobby), Plaster of Paris (I buy it in 25 pound bags from the hardware store for about $18 and will last you several boards) and a sealed container to shake the compound up in. 

The Two Ingredients

After a minute of mixing in a sealed container

After filling a plaster container to about 40% with the paper chunks, I then take about the same volume of plaster and fill it in to about 3/4 of the way of the container. The mixture should be a roughly 1:1 ratio of plaster and paper Mache. I then seal the container, shake for about a minute and then break up the larger chunks of paper with my hand and repeat. This ensures the plaster then coats all of the paper and it becomes a fine and feathery mixture. 

Pour some of the mixture into a cup and gradually pour water - less is more at first. Take a spatula and stir until the compound is about slightly less than the consistency of cottage cheese. The less water you use, the faster the dry-time will be and vice versa. Using one of your hands, take the compound out and squeeze a handful; if water comes out between your fingers, you have likely used too much. 

PSA - sorry for formatting issues if you're reading this with your phone...I've spent about an hour trying to do and redo this section of the post and can't find a solution without starting from scratch....

Yummy

Large dops of the compound were then applied all over the board. It was placed in between the 'missing' flagstones, smeared over the elevated hills and used to create a gradual slope towards the entrance of the cathedral. Be mindful of dry times and try not to wet too much compound at one time, lest it dry while you are working; keep an eye on it. If it starts to dry up, you can always apply a small amount of water to keep it in its working state. When the compound is laid out, gently 'patter' it with your fingers to give it a more textured feel. 

Compound used to fill in larger gaps and create slopes

Lightly 'tapping/pattering' the compound yields textured results

In certain areas, such as the cliff face near the ruined lighthouse and the corner hill, I wanted there to be rugged rock features by using plaster. This takes a lot of practice, and I have not gotten comfortable with it yet even to this day - but it is a very common practice in the model railroad community. 

To do this I mixed plaster with a small amount of water, stirred, and applied it in small 3-4" areas where I wanted rock faces. Ensure that the plaster is not too runny but not so firm that it won't adhere to the foam. If the plaster 'sags' and immediately descends down, it has a tad too much water. 

You can find more information here: Carving Rockfaces - Model Railroads

Work quickly and start dividing the plaster into different cubes or blocks with a spatula. Let it rest, then go back with a retractable X-Acto knife and start roughly forming the blocks. Look at reference photos and let the rock face naturally form around how you work your blade. Try not and let rocks look 'uniform' with squares or cubes being perpendicular at the seams. Once it dries for another minute or so, take two knives and start hacking away, shaving and further refining the rock-face to be pitted, streamed etc. 

I randomly hack at the cliffs, and use a wire brush afterwards to create a 'streamed' horizontal surface. 

Larger 'boulders' were sculpted towards the bottom, while the rest of the cliff face was 'streamed' with horizontal cuts and slashes. While imperfect and maybe not as realistic, it suited my needs at the time. 

With the bulk of the foundation of the board complete, I moved onto the structures. I had a rough idea of what I wanted from my sketch and put it into action. I created a mold of the entrance piece of the Imperial Bastion kit from 2009 and cast it with Milliput. The hatch was propped up with slabs of foam and then the rest of the hill was smoothed out with my plaster compound. Additionally, I glued a large root that I had been saving for a situation just like this to act as a gnarled tree. 

This kit truly was versatile and full of good bits...

This would serve as an entrance to either my Carthage Research Facility #49 Zone Mortalis tiles or allow players to move between different boards at some point during the event, entering the tunnel systems beneath Vastarian and popping up elsewhere. 

To allow models easier access to the corner hill, I inserted planks from the Lake Town buildings set and applied compound around them to give them strength. This would act as a small stepway from the road to the top of the hill. 

With fully half the board built and fleshed out, I then moved onto the more difficult aspect - building the cathedral itself and finishing the lighthouse. I started with the lighthouse as it was already mostly glued together. 

Placing the modified Dreadstone Blight kit against the foam, there were several large gaps that needed to be corrected. While I was going to allow for a bit of disrepair to be present, I did not want it to be completely ruined...I carved out large chunks of foam to act as stone blocks, textured them and started laying them to help 'connect' the lighthouse to the cliff. Since there were still large undesirable holes, I smeared joint filler all over the surface and lightly dappled it with my fingers to give some further texture. 

The ruined lighthouse with some details shaved off and filler applied.

The main cathedral was a different beast altogether. I knew right at the beginning I wanted to use the old Shrine of the Aquila kit (maybe that's the wrong name? God, it's been over a decade). It always had an imposing, tall look to it that I wanted my cathedral to have. I laid out the intact pieces I had and reinforced them with sprues lining the top and bottom to give them some rigidity. I then used a combination of hot glue dabs and hobby glue to adhere the main structure to the foam. 

I needed access points, and wanted the interior to be accessible from both angles. To do this I used the doors from the old Sanctum Imperialis kit and cut out the lower portion of one of the Shrine panels. I then put tiny dollhouse hinges with some greenstuff and Krazy Glue to make the doors adhere and swing open and closed (this was a never-ending battle, would not recommend). 

The main entranceway needed to be grander and more imposing. The tiny door for the Shrine of the Aquila kit never really struck me as something that was worthy of such an impressive structure...so I cut out the front window and main section all of the way down and scratch-built wooden doors (with appropriate details and hinges, as well). I added some details from an old Warhammer Fantasy kit and wa-la!

Plasticard, original and recast details gave the front door alot more character.

Walkways were used and reinforced with sprue-struts to provide more strength to the walls.

Milliput was liberally applied at the seams to provide extra durability. Hinges were applied to the interior of the door. 

More Milliput...it's free, after all.

This is what the main structure looked like when it was all said and done:

Then it was off to detail the interior. I wanted to use foamboard flagstones, like I normally do, but that would prevent the doors from swinging inward...I needed another solution.

Being the dingus that I am and a glutton for punishment, I decided on hand-carving 1" plasticard flag stones, detailing and weathering them individually. I got through about...fifty...of them before I realized how stupid this was, as I needed 162 and it was taking ages. So, I took to casting them in batches of ten. This was something I could easily do 'on the side' while watching my kids play or taking a break at work. Micro-hobbying, as I call it, is the best. 

I started laying out the flagstones both in front of the cathedral and in the main structure. I laid some of them haphazardly in front, as I planned on texturing the surrounding area anyway. The rest were laid out in the main cathedral. There were still some unsightly gaps between the flagstones, and so I used thinned gravel cement to adhere fine sand. 

Bricks were also sprinkled along the small hill leading to the corner of the cathedral.

 

The final product!

Fine sand was sprinkled and then pushed into the recesses between flagstones, and adhered with Gravel Fixer. 

With the hard stuff out of the way, I could not get to the fun part - texturing and painting! That'll be in the final post. I'm tired now. 

Sorry this post took so long!

Till next time,

-Bill