Rome wasn't built in a day...

No, Rome wasn't built in a day, but the Basilica Canus of Anara V had to be. :-)  Technically a day and a half, but who's counting?

As I mentioned many times at Adepticon, I had been training myself for the construction of this army board for months with smaller projects to test out individual elements.  You can recognize them when you search through past terrain posts.

I wanted to use as much pink foam on this as possible.  The idea was to avoid the use of foam core, which tends to warp when painted.  That material also absorbs paint very rapidly, making it more difficult to paint.  I have learned through those earlier projects that the pink foam is a very nice surface for painting!

There was another advantage over the previous army boards I have made.  It was so much lighter!  This super tall display board weighed a fraction of what the Tomb Kings board weighed.  Finally, the textured 'bottom' surface of masonite really sticks to the felt used on tournament tables.

The bottom section was a 2 x 2 piece of 2 inch foam.  Really strong, but super light.

At this point I tried to lay out how the hippodrome track would appear.  I went back and forth quite a bit on this first layer, since I needed lots of room for jetbikes, and for the rest of the structure, such as the grandstands.

I had purchased wedding cake pillars for the columns.  This would determine how tall the outer walls would be.

To create enough open space for the windows, I raised the height of the pillars a bit more.  This was becoming more and more like a medieval cathedral... drawn out in the dirt and changing things on the fly when necessary! :-)  The grandstands are also being built up at this time.

I used the cardboard backing of one of my used up pads of paper palettes.  This stuff is great, since it is very dense and strong.  I use it on the roofs of houses as well.  You can see that the bases of the two forward towers have been placed on the board.

Now it's time to start getting vertical!  The windows were cut out the same way as the ruined cathedral project from February.

I did the same for the other side of the board.  The blue painter's tape is ideal for holding things in place as the glue dries.

This is where things get even more complicated.  I knew that I was going to have to make some parts of this board separately, so that they could be painted prior to final assembly.  That made arranging the next floor with precision very important.  Also, I had to be very aware of leaving enough space for the miniatures!

This shows you how the walls were built up on the second 'floor'.  The columns on the left were made from polystyrene tubing.  I did use some small bits of foam core for the caps and bases, since it would let me use super glue to attach them.  Time was critical, and I needed things to dry as rapidly as possible.

More exciting episodes to come! Stay tuned!