Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Winter Returns


It's time to get into the winter swing with a few terrain pieces for my winter Bolt Action board.  This will be constructed for multiple theatres and eras, including the Winter War, Hungary, Battle of the Bulge, encirclement of Stalingrad, fighting around Leningrad, and much more!

I will be using scrap pieces from the Barbarossa board that we did last summer and fall.

A few new materials have been added to these kinds of pieces of late, including spackle and plaster mixes.  Note that I saved the pieces which were shaved off the thick foam section...


You have seen me using these small decorative trees before on the Ardennes board.  They are very inexpensive, and I got them from Amazon. 



I glued a piece of the thin underlayment foam on top to extend the height of the hill.  Some additional glue was applied, which will mix with the spackle which I am about to add.

A palette knife was the perfect tool to spread out the plaster, and even mix it with the glue.  This will make the plaster stronger, and hold the gravel and sand mix which is yet to be added.


Once the spackle has been spread out onto the surface, I cut down the small chips of foam into smaller bits, and layered them on top of each other to create a few rock slabs.  I have done this in the past with my terrain pieces, and it always enhances the look of those pieces.

I'm looking forward to seeing what the flock and snow will look like on these!  In fact, I want to have some cliff edges on which I can hang some icicles. 


I smoothed down the spackle and glue mix with a wet brush, so that I can start placing some larger rocks into that wet plaster.


I had a few different types of gravel and sand, which I didn't get too crazy with, since they will be covered with flock and snow later on.


As you can see, it was a simple matter to shove the trees into the foam with a bit of glue!  I am working on a much larger and elaborate version of this, which will explore the use of the pink foam and plaster a bit more.  Stay tuned!

If you want to see even more terrain building articles, any support that you can offer to the Patreon Page is appreciated!