Gaming Board On A Budget

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Thousand Sons facing down the Sons Of Fenris

With limited space, I wanted to sort a gaming board for the kitchen. Something for me and the lad to play on, but also for entertaining mates. The dining table can extend, but a 6*4 would take over the room, so I decided to stick 3*3 with a focus on smaller points games, and things like Blood Bowl, Shadespire, Frostgrave and X-wing. With that in mind I wanted a mat and scenery to cover all games, so went with a snow mat and decided on generic gothic ruins that would work in both fantasy and sci-fi. The bonus of the snow mat is that it works as Hoth for X-Wing games.

First up, some 12mm thick MDF from any diy store or timber merchants, cut to size. They usually come as 8*4, so you can mix and match to suit your size, and shouldn’t cost more than £20.00. You can use the offcuts to go modular too and make a bigger board as and when

The market is awash with scenic gaming mats, but I wanted the mousemat type, and with not too much detail, so it could work with multiple scales. I plumped for this one from Deep Cut, and unfortunately, only Waylaid Games, had it in stock. By The Throne it actually turned up the next day, but I still wouldn’t recommend them, I always use Element Games. Pro Tip, when you buy your hobby crack from Element, always use this referral link and get it bookmarked, as it helps Corehammer out.

Building the actual scenery followed a unified approach, mount it on foam board, add some texture with filler, sand, plus gravel in the corners, seal it with matt varnish to avoid soggy sand, spray with Poundland Black Auto primer, drybrush with Wilkos make up brushes using emulsion tester pots, a cheap wash, sponge highlighting, add PVA snow, a light dusting of Snow Spray from above and seal it again with matt varnish. Most of these cheap tips were picked up from the YouTube channel Luke’s APS, a fantastic resource for scenery on a budget

This was to be one of 2 centrepieces for the board, and somewhere to retire my Frostgrave warband. I got some decorative cake pillars off eBay, broke a couple of them up and retired the lads as statues. I added some green washes to give the effect of weathered marble.

I went overboard with the cork and gravel on the amphitheatre from Amera, and also added a resin T-rex skull from China, to make it look like an abandoned and ruined ritual site, that the statue avenue leads up to. The ruined columns were made using these cake moulds and plaster of paris

Amera Ruined Chapel

Amera Building Ruins

Also from Amera, are the ruined chapel and  ruined building to add some height to the board, and someone always wants a spot for their Devastators or Sniper rifles

This ruined archway set from DarkOps was fantastic and took minutes to build

3rd Edition 40k ruins for some scatter terrain

Polystyrene rock towers mounted on some old shitty CDRs to fill the board corners out
It’s mainly been used for small games of 40k with the lad. Here’s a Contemptor hosing down the last of my Rubrics after they blew off Murderfang

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