I have always been so impressed with the scenery made by scale train enthusiasts - they just look amazing. So much so that I've held off doing it myself, until now... I discovered a modular battle board system from a company called Back 2 Base-ix (who used to be my preferred bitz seller on eBay many moons ago!) It's very simple, you can either get 30cm, 15cm or 10cm MDF squares (and height options) and each board is magnatized to lock together. I chose the 30cm system, the 5300 Series, as my first foray into scenery and it was really easy, quick and tonnes of fun! |
At this stage I was pretty sure I had ruined a perfectly good battle board!
Once I painted the inside with gradually darker shades of Typhus Corrosion as I got to the centre, I let that dry and the next day i mixed Back 2 Base-ix Realistic Water Effects with some Athonian Camoshade and poured it in. It dried darker and murkier than I thought, so I wouldn't use too much!
Once that was done it was time to add the rocky surface I wanted that would match the bases of my War Hounds. I have been using the small slate from the old Warhammer 40K Basing Set which quickly ran out, so I went to GW to buy some more... | .. and surprise surprise, the jerks have changed their recipe for small slate... it's now much bigger! Compare the pieces (above) The large darker grey ones are the current stock and the tiny light grey ones are the ones I have been using. So now I had to combine to two to just get the base covered. |
Following the glue drying, I washed the entire rocky surface with the old GW paint called Ghoul Grey. It's effectively German WWII jacket colour. It was heavily watered down and applied to all the tiny rock areas.
The Agrellan Earth areas were then washed with Typhus Corrosion, particularly around the edges where it met the rocky areas. Again this was heavily watered down (right).
I then heavily drybrushed all the rocky areas with Celestra Grey. In retrospect, adding the coloured rocks AFTER this process would have been smarter!
I did about an hour a day and it took about a week. Seems like a pretty good pay off for so little time!
Now with the modular nature of the 5300 Series from Back 2 Base-ix I can easily add other pieces to this including ramps, lower sections, trenches and tunnels (coming soon).
There are lots of systems out there, but this one worked well for me.
Do you have a system that works well for you?
What do you use?
Hopefully I can show you more Back 2 Base-ix pieces that I'll add to this soon.