Scratch built Bolt Action gameboard Part 2: the finished village!

I finished up the build of a gameboard representing the footprint of a village for my Bolt Action games. The finished board, which measures 40 x 24 and has two equal parts, isn't big enough to cover a side of a a 6x4 foot table, but it was really designed to add some realism to the village part of our table. I always felt that putting building on a green mat didn't look cinematic enough.

Here's the second half being built. Here's the link to the build of the first half, it explains how to stamp cobbles as well: HERE

Here's the finished table

You can see I haven't painted the edge of the new half. Because of that you can also see that despite using tough composite board, there is still warping going on. The right half warped quite badly, the new part a bit less, because I changed the order of the build of the board, starting with the composite board and working my way up. 

You can see I added some ornamentation in the stone work, with crosswalks and a circle in the square area.

I haven't finalized what should be on the right top, where the tree is now. I feel it needs a fountain or garden to emphasize the importance of the tower. I also painted the side walk around the tower different, to make that area stand out. 

Once you start going to eyelevel with the camera, the board and models really come to life. Enjoy some of these action shots!

Below you can see the warping showing, right behind the Sherman. I am not bummed about it, but if I make another board, I will make sure this doesn't happen again. 

The valuable truckload 

The hedges around the middle part of the board were made of Scotchbrite steel scrubbers. I cut it into strips, glued it to styrene and painted it. They look fun! 

Top view 

The objective is being surrounded... 

Scratch built Bolt Action Game Board, Part 1

In one week I built one side of a village board for Bolt Action, using composite board, foamboard, beach sand, glue and some dedication. Here is the first part, 20x24 inches, from start to finish

After mapping out the road and side I started making the cobble stone road. Using a brush without the hair and shaped like a brick, I started punching in the design. I had to take the top paper off the foam board to expose the soft foam that really takes the indentation well. Here are images of that technique from a previous project:


Here is the road and sidewalks. For those sidewalks I used a larger stone (different brush) and made them look more distressed looking by picking at the foam a bit. I didn't count how many times I had to punch, but it took me three sessions; after a while your eyes and hands go nuts!

Here's the design, sanded as well. Realize that you can't spray the foam, so I had to paint the whole thing by hand.

And now the fun part; the finished board images! And again, Bolt Action is so cinematic, it's great to work on armies and terrain.

The tree on the right is part of a set of forest terrain that I made last month, post coming soon.

The captain is analyzing his options...

Part two will be the other side of the board, it will feature this building and a village square type scene.

Hope this inspires!

SC Mike

More scratchbuilt Terrain for WW2 gaming: the finished tower

The above image proves it: a decent piece of terrain with our beloved models look great, cinematic and overall it makes me want to play Bolt Action again and again. Maybe that's why I have been on a terrain building spree. Here's the latest, finished building:

I wanted it to look like a North Italian type building, with the slanted roof and the light colored stonework.It's not a realistic piece, but it is functional and it looks the WW2 part. The stairs coming down are big enough for a model on each step, so they stay in coherence when moving through.

Below is the back with a similar set of stairs. You can also see the city shield of Como, a town in Northern Italy.

View from the top. You can see the Warhammer pieces on the side of the wall look fine, especially once I added a few roof tiles.

Once you start taking close ups, the terrain really comes to life:

The walk ways are 1.5 inch, so models have enough space

As mentioned in previous posts, this piece is built up in 3 parts. If you don't want to use the wall and stairs, you can just use the tower and base...

Or make the base into a little square and put the tower on by itself. The walls could be made into a field headquarters or some storage area for objective purposes.

The floor of the tower is made to look very old with broken flagstones and lots of rubble, although still flat enough to put models on.

I am now pondering more stuff, like a town square and roads. I have been looking online for inspiration, and my first impressions are that the battlefields we create for our games are way to clean looking. It's astounding to see the destruction of urban warfare in WW2, like the shot below. 

It would be hard to design something for Bolt Action that looks like that. The image below might be more feasible. Interesting to see that the road looks like dirt, although it probably isn't. But the rubble and dust create a cover over it, which would be easier to model then the cobble or flagstone I was thinking of before..

This was the final part of this 3 part series. Below are the other two parts:

part one: building the tower and stairs

part two: making the cobblestone square

If you click on the label Terrain on the side of this blog, you can find all the terrain I have built over the last 4 months. Hope this inspires!

SC Mike

More scratchbuilt terrain for WW2 games Part 2: making cobblestone streets the hard way..

Here's is the image where I left off in my previous post:

You can see the scratchbuilt tower, standing on a little cobblestone square, a small plaza of sorts. It looks old, worn, like it has been walked on for hundreds of years. Here's a close up of square which measures about 8x8 inches.You can see the cobblestones have nice irregularity to them and with a bit of sand (which respresent debris from the damage to the building) it looks pretty cool.

Here is how I did that.

Step 1. on your piece of foam board, tear off the top layer of paper to reveal the softer middle part:

That is not that easy and in the future I will have to look for a different board, the paper is really stuck on there! After a minute here's the result. I just did a small side for the sample:

You can tell that using your nails to get underneath the paper, creates little craters and dents. That actually helps it make it more realistic, as you will see.

Step 2: remove hair from an old brush and shape the metal part into a stone of your liking

Step 3. Using a ruler (or not), start punching the brush end into the foam in a pattern you like.

After 10 seconds you have something like this:

Now the paper that we couldn't get off, we can use to our advantage. In the square base for the tower, that's where I added the sand, but in the example below, the paper parts that didn't want to come off, you make into stucco parts of an old wall. I painted up a little piece in two different looks, for you all to see. I also made another cobble brush, with more round stones. Of course the painting can be done a lot better, this is just for example. 

Step 4: OK, here's the final step: paint it up! I painted my cobblestone square in grays and browns and highlighted a bit with lighter sand colors. Here's the result: 

It has a wonderfully old look to it, very medieval and so perfect for Bolt Action in Northern Italy where many of these streets and squares were still in existence. 

The sand really adds some depth. 

You can do different patterns, like circles AND if you paint stones individually, you can make a great red brick house with gray mortar 

Part 3 will be the final post of this building, which was started HERE in part one

There are some amazing modelers out there that do this technique infinitely better than myself, please research it a bit online. There are different boards and foams available that will make it easier. I myself just kind of solve problems at hand with the stuff I have, which is part of the journey!

SC Mike