We recently did a tournament to raise funds for new terrain for the Black Hills Wargaming group. Everyone pitched $20 for the tournament with prizes being anything from free miniature painting to choosing board themes and colors. Thankfully GW set us up with some serious terrain so that helped our measly budget quite a bit! I myself donated my time to paint up the whole lot and others pitched in to build the massive terrain set for the first board.
Since I was starting from scratch and I needed to get the project done fast and as cheap as possible I thought it would be a great time to do another tutorial on making boards and painting up terrain. This is not meant to make the most beautiful board ever with intricate markings and details on all the terrain. If you want to get a massive project done fast you have to keep one thing in mind:
"This is not your baby!"
In other words don't worry if it isn't perfect or not a prize winning paint job. The terrain and board needs to be serviceable, look good and be finished! I will be using a lot of time saving spray techniques that you can do without even needing an airbrush to get to a very acceptable tabletop quality standard.
First step was assembling the terrain (well first step after the shopping spree). The tournament winner wanted to see some kind of hive city / industrial type of board so the GW sector mechanicus stuff was an easy fit. I've left a lot of things without glue in order to keep it both modular and make sure that things that are going to be different colors will remain separate for ease of painting.
To facilitate this here's about $100 in spray paint (texture paint adds up really fast!). This is what I'm using to do two boards plus all the terrain so you can get away with less. That said it took about 3.5 cans of black to simply prime the plastic stuff! I use the cheap walmart stuff whenever possible and move up to krylon for most of the colors as they go on rather nice.
The boards themselves are made of 8' x 4' MDF boards cut in half. You can find these at the hardware stores mine are from Lowes. The High density styrofoam will not be a part of this project but will have to wait for the second board...
Other things we will be using are various brushes, detailing paint, knitting mesh (find these at fabric stores or any hobby place) and plasticard sheets.
You will want to sand down the plastic knitting mesh on both sides in order for it to glue to the surface of the board easily.
Next me and my shadow make a few measurements and mark the halfway point on one of the boards so that we can mark out the 6' line of the 8' x 4' so the board can be used as a 6' x 4' as well. After marking it spray a big old black line right down the marking. We will be covering this with painters tape later to mark the line for the finished project.
Next I cut up a bunch of various sizes of knitting mesh to be used as metal grate platforms on the board. After tastefully arranging them its time to glue them all to the board with super glue.
And this is obviously why you need so much spray paint so that you can just weigh the mesh down as it dries.
Yep no other reason to have all those cans trust me...
Alright after those dry the black pain is definitely dry so measure out the 6' mark again and put a thin stripe of painters tape right down the middle. Once the project is done and the tape removed there will be a nice legible and straight line denoting the separation. I like this method as it leaves room for each player to have a 2' x 2' display board on the side during tournaments as well.
And now its time to prime all that plastic. I primed it directly on the board as eventually I want to prime the board black anyways so just let the overspray do most of the job for you. Again this much plastic takes a lot of black so buy cheap cans don't get the GW liquid black gold!
Three and a half cans later you will notice where I was messy with the glue sticks out like a sore thumb. Don't worry this board is about to have more layers of spray paint on it than an oil painting...
After all that dries wait for another month for the weather to clear and the snow to melt for a whole day and spend your only nice day painting up the colors on the plastic! Here I have made two groups one which I will paint metalic gets thrown back in the box for now. The other that will be colorful and happy (ish) comes out for a pre shade spray.
What is a pre shade spray? Basically we are creating a black and white gradient for the color to be lightly applied to. This will make the colors pop more along the tops and leave the shadowed areas darker when we go to apply color. This is done by spraying a grey paint over the top at roughly a 45 degree angle. Don't let the spray linger on any spot at all keep it moving and go light and fast. This may take some practice so get some junker piece or rocks to practice on. We just want the spray to act as a light source basically.
After the gray I go back in and do the same with white pointed straight down at the pieces.
As you can see this leaves the areas where light wouldn't hit dark and the exposed parts light.
Keeping the spray moving is vital for the flat pieces as otherwise you will just coat the whole thing. remember to keep the can far enough away so that you don't drown anything in grey or white.
Next we hit our first color out of the park! I went with yellow for the walkways (be sure to hide away anything you don't want yellow at this point) and for the vehicles/boxes as well. Just like when you do the pre shading keep the can moving and go for a light 'dusting'. This will help the pre shade come through and give a little variance in the paint job for a gritty grim dark feel.
Double check any areas that are just black and white too. It's easy to miss spots but generally keep the can at a 45 degree to maybe a 35 degree angle to the plastic just don't leave things as a black and white gradient fully. Some of the black will be left but that is fine for the overall look especially between the grates.
Here's a closeup of the yellow all pre shaded and happy.
The underside of our walkways is totally black at this point but that's ok as it will be hidden in shadow anyways. I flipped the walkways over and did a very light dusting of the underside for effect. For the most part no one will see these at all so it won't matter much.
Now the fun part, weathering. This is the first of several weathering steps that will go into these. Grab a black spray can and very very lightly dust all the yellow pieces from straight overhead. This will give us a bit of grit and grime to work with.
Next go in with a brown spray can and do the same thing. Now we have a properly grimy yellow.
Now to make some candy colored cargo containers. Since they are already pre shaded we do the same stuff that we did with the yellow only in blue, red and green now.
And yes this means we do the black and brown as well.
Next up it's time to paint the metallic bits. All of the struts holding up the walkways will be metalics so make sure to have them all facing the same way. We have to spray them from the same angle as the yellow but they won't stay standing on their own with the force of the spray can going against them.
Take the metallic and spray them from the side so that the flow goes over them all the same way and then flip em over and repeat!
Afterwards they should come out already shaded with a nice transition from shiny metal to black.
Now take all the stuff that will stand up and needs to be shiny and happy and hit it with that spray at a 45 degree angle again.
And here we are all shiny and happy!
Next go in with a black paint and do weathering like we did on the walkways earlier. Hit the tops of the smoke stacks with black from the side for a burnt smokey effect if you want too.
And done!
And finally we hit the rest of the doo dabs and stuff with silver so we can add them in later.
Off camera I put a coat of red on some of the doors and the massive collection of ladders as well. This was all done the same way as the rest of it so you get the gist by now. Here's the whole set of plastic all painted up. Next time we'll hit it with some more weathering to make it look less like a toy set and get some details on it as well as work on the actually board finally!
