Reign in Hell Battle Board (WIP Terrain)

Lockdown is dragging on here in Melbourne Victoria (good thing too - hundreds of people with the Delta C-19 variant coupled with deaths and hospitals really feeling the pressure) and whilst my wife and I are gainfully employed and our children safe and engaged, everyone needs an outlet. I've been exercising regularly this year (loving my crossrope set) and slowly rediscovering my wargaming creative mojo. Hobbies should be a release and escape, and right now that's what I'm getting by way of some recent terrain projects relating to Reign in Hell a new set of wargaming rules I pick up as of late.

As it happens, I'm yet to play the game, however the setting (Hell, however you might imagine it) is fertile grounds for firing up the creative juices. We've got a sizable community at Axes & Ales (my local wargaming club) and more than a few members have expressed some interest in giving the game a try. The standard gaming board is 22x30 inches and as it happened, I had a piece of chipboard about that size collecting dust in my shed. I really liked the flesh effect I had achieved using styrofoam last year, so I thought a flesh-like plane of hell would make for a great setting.

First step was breaking up some styrofoam sheets and gluing them in a haphazard manner on the chipboard. I used Liquid Nails for the gluing, spreading it over the board with a piece of stiff cardboard, and ensured that the styrofoam was packed pretty closely - I wanted cracks, but through experience I know that once I apply heat to the foam, it very quickly shrinks.

 

With the foam all glued down, I grabbed my flame torch and let it rip. Setting it to a hot blue flame, I waved it over the body of the foam and applied it a little closer to those areas where foam edges met. It takes a bit of practice but it's actually an easy technique to implement.

The flaming is a very quick process and in addition to creating some great textures, it also seals the foam some: it becomes a little less pliable and bouncy, which helps when it comes to ensuring that paint sticks. And onto painting. I used simple acrylic black paint, slightly watered down and just laid it on thick. It's always scary doing that because you feel that the textures are going to be hidden but again, my experience is once it dries, those textures will 99% remain. On went a glove on and I grabbed a house paint brush and let it rip!

Next was a little bit dicey: using a solvent on the foam. I have a can of black automotive primer-filler, which when sprayed onto styrofoam, dissolves it, leaving lovely organic-like textures. I used this sparingly on the board focusing on the foam's edges. Because I had pre-coated the foam with the acrylic paint, the effect was not where as dramatic as it could have been - it created little pockets of decay rather than wholesale melting (I've done that before, so know just how quickly a board can go from looking good to a melted mess if you don't judge it right). The outcome is a little hard to see in the picture, but here you go all the same... check out the left-hand corner by way of an example - note this is post another quick layer of acrylic black paint to again seal the now exposed, melted foam.

Finally the board was ready for some precision painting... well not really. I simply load up a big, house painting style brush with my cheap acrylic paints (stuff I bought for the kids while they were little) with whatever colours feel right and layer it up in a sort of drybrush fashion. Here are a couple of pictures to illustrate how it has progressed.

So that's where things are presently at. It's starting to feel nice and bruised - using greens, reds, purples, and yellows all contribute to a real eye-catching, interesting surface. I won't do too much more painting wise in the short-term, instead I'll turn my mind to how I'll deal with the cracks, but I'll share that in a later post.

PS yes, you might have noticed some of earlier 'meat' terrain pieces around the edge of some of the pictures. You can find more pictures of the same on my blog by following the Flesh tag.

PPS here's the link to the final piece.