Tabletop Thursday: Armies on Parade Terrain Board (Part 1)

Hopefully you’ve seen my Armies on Parade Board, titled ‘Assuming Direct Control’. Set on a Necron Tomb World, it follows an Ad Mech faction as it delves into supposedly heretical knowledge as it tries to find out more about their Machine God. Because I wanted an excuse to use just about every heretical conversion I could come up with, my force would be a mix of Ad Mech, (non-overt) Chaos, and just about every Xenos known to Mankind. But because it was going to be on a tomb world. I had to have my terrain board set up with a mix of predominantly Imperial as well as Necron styles.

While my last Armies on Parade display was relatively small, It was also very tall. My plan was simple; I wanted something that fulfilled the requirements of a 2′ by 2′ board, as well as being modular, and able to fit in the display shelf in my new house. I settled on relatively simple 1′ by 1′ wooden boards that I would build on. This allowed me to expand the board as I saw fit, with the ultimate aim being a 4′ by 4′ (or larger) series of boards that I could actually use as terrain. I didn’t go with anything more complicated because I didn’t trust my own carpentry skills, and I wanted the boards to be as flexible as possible.

I had already wanted the tesseract vault for the imprisoned C’tan, and rather than have the rest of the model go to waste, I decided to turn it into terrain. The top section of the tesseract vault would be good as a pyramid, while I planned to flip the bottom part of the terreract vault as a sort of stepped altar for my army. I had foamcore on top of  the wooden boards so I could hollow them out. Washing hose served as the tubing on the tomb world, installed by the Ad Mech to siphon power from the Necron structures.

In keeping with the aim to be modular, I put the two halves of the tesseract pyramid on different boards, so it could be used as one whole, or seperately as in my AOP board.

As detailing for the board, I decided to make press molds of the various size of Necron Scarabs. Both the normal sized ones that came in the warrior box, as well as the small ones from the Tesseract Vault. My first try did not go well.

After moving from greenstuff to Instamold, my second attempt fared much better. Pretty soon I had Scarabs coming out of my ears.

In order to provide further detail to the board, I made pressmolds of the inside of the tesseract vault, to be used as flooring in the pyramid. The rest of the board was textured using sand texture paint as well as Tim Holtz distressed crackle paint.

I bought a bazillion different cheaper crackle paints (GW crackle medium is WAY to expensive do use as terrain), and this was the best balance between price and something that worked. Even then, I recommend you lay down a thin coat of either texture or paint first to give something for the crackle paint to adhere to. It’s likely to flake off otherwise. Oh, and buy the large bottle if you’re making terrain. The fact that it’s clear isn’t going to bother you since you’re going to prime it anyway.

The crackle paint is usually used for crafts, so you may be able to find it at a scrapbooking store. That’s where I found mine.

I built the steps for the sacrificial altar out of foamboard.

Here you can see me trying out the placement of the models on the board.

And here it is all textured up.

Next: Paint!