Making a Modular Multi-Level Gaming Table, Part 3

Ooops! I posted this rather prematurely, as I left a large section out between part 2 and 3! Now edited to fix that....

Well rather later than I expected to post this, here is the third installment of the modular gaming table. I left you all with the negative-depth piece sculpted and drying, ready for some further detail. Here is the board where we left it, though considerably dryer!

Now this is a good point to tie everything together and ensure an even surface for detailing, painting and flocking. The first thing to do is to make up some more filler, this time using mostly PVA glue with just a little water added - this makes the mixture very adherent, and also slightly flexible when dry - we don't want big chunks of plaster-based material cracking off mid-game.

This is then liberally applied over everything - initially I used the wooden spatula, then my hands, and then smoothed everything over with a dampened brush. For some areas the brush was stippled into the wet filler/PVA mixture to provide some texture.

I also used the end of a pencil to create some crater depressions, and the point of the pencil to reproduce the star-shaped cracks from the impact sites.

Now, white is never a good colour to base terrain on, so the first thing is to change that - painting the whole base black.

This is then the basis to create our rock faces - first a dark grey on the exposed rock, leaving only the deepest crevices black

Another couple of progressively lighter grey shades, and our rocks are looking decidedly more rock-like. The flash here does make this look rather lighter than it really is;

The rock faces finished for the moment, the next step is to colour the rest of the non-rock areas - in this case I used some old GW Bestial Brown that I needed to get rid of.

Now comes the fun bit! It's time to break out the flock, grit, sand, ballast and whatever else you want to use to decorate your board. Here's the start of mine....

...and the finish;

And just to finish off the effect, let's add some models...

Here we see some nobel Dindrenzi tank destroyers about to liberate the pit from its tyrannical Terran occupiers!

So there we have it, a fully formed 2' square negative-depth gaming module, ready to join its five compatriots for plenty of Planetfall-related (or other game systems) fun. One of the things I was careful to ensure was that there are no real scale items on the board - the tile could be used for any scale from 6mm to 60mm, with no real issues.

Anyway, that's all from me at the moment, I hope this has inspired you to create your own!