Swamp Board - Base Complete!

As the title says, I pretty much have finished with the base board of the project with the exception of adding the water. (That will come once all of the flock finishes drying) So at this point I think it's safe to say that I can now move onto the stage of building out the modular terrain pieces that will be going on top of the board and provide cover and obstacles for the armies. So let's take a look at the final steps for creating the base of the board.






In my last post about the swamp board I had left off with the finishing coats of dry brushing the earth tones on the board. Now it is time to address the tiles that cover the surface of the board. (see below)

The first thing I did was paint each tile in a terra cotta or brick orange for the base of each tile. This step took awhile as I hand painted each tile, one at a time to ensure that I did not smudge the orange color onto the surrounding earth.

I watered down the orange so that some of the black below would still be visible, giving it a realistic look.
Next I mixed up some light brown with a small amount of the terra cotta and dark brown to get a Sandstone look. As with the orange, this was done a square at a time with various amounts of paint so that underlying colors would bleed through.

Next, I took a tiny drop of dark brown and black and mixed it with a lot of water and generously gave all the tiles a wash with a large brush. Since I wanted to make it look like this area has been flooded over numerous times, I applied the wash 4 times over different days to build up dark layers. Once that was done I applied Earthshade Agrax in the deepest areas to give it a dirty and grimy look.

Once that was done I started to apply flock to random parts of the board and tiles to give the impression that there is moss and tiny vegetation growing on the ground. This was a simple process of painting wood glue in random patterns along the board and tiles.

Here is a Crisis Suit in the center area to give a scale reference.

The next step is to vacuum up any lose flock from the board and then I'll start pouring the water effects. Since that process will probably take a few weeks due to the time to cure and the amount I'll be using, I will also start working on the modular pieces. Here is a sneak peak of some of the material I'll be using.

Tiny bricks made up from air-hardening clay

Tree branches soaking in watered down wood glue.

While I have been working on the board I was also able to finish up my daemon prince. The model is designed to fit in with both my 40k and Fantasy army so the glued magnets to the base and it's feet so that I can switch from a round base to a square base.