Finished!

Put in another long day yesterday to finish the final board!


After that was done I scraped the sides down to make sure they would still fit next to each other, had to be careful here because the sand is basically sitting on a layer of glue and it's worryingly easy to peel it back. Fortunately pushing from most directions does nothing.


I still have to give it all a matt coat of varnish to protect the paint, but a strong wipe with a hand cuts your hand rather than taking sand off, so I'm pretty confident that it won't chip much.


Anyway, the last board had lava on it, so I followed pretty much the same steps as for the other board.

First it was the grey foundation paint in the middle, overlaid with white, the cracks near the lava were foundation yellow. Next it was a nice heavy dose of yellow.

This was going to take a while to dry, so in the meantime I did the fortress grey drybrushing of the rest of the board and blacked in the cracks up the top.


I skipped a photo here sorry, this one shows the red layer on the far pit, while the closer one has had the red layer and the scorched brown layer on top.

And after a touching up of black around the edges, then putting the codex grey/fortress grey back around the edges:

As with the other board, the bubbles were painted in yellow then the bottom of the pits was given a gloss coat.

And before I show you the final product, here's an edge shot showing the old table. You'll notice it's nowhere near 4 foot wide and how uneven the surface is.


Drumroll please...

Ta-Da!


So much better than the old table!


And with some scenery added...

And a top view to compare with the original one I posted last week...

And, of course, I had to put some miniatures on for scale as well.

Close side of the board is Druzhag the Beastmaster with the Wild Warg Chieftain, six wargs, four giant spiders, two bat swarms, a cave troll, eight goblins with sword and shield, eight with spear and six with bow. That's a 500 point army with 35 models.


Far side of the board is Durburz the Goblin King with his retinue of four Goblin captains, the Drums in the Deep, ten goblins with sword and shield, fifteen with spear and eleven with bow. A 500 point army with 43 models.

Above is the troll and gobs on Druzhag's side. In the left background you can see some of the wargs, spiders, Druzhag and his bats.

Above is the Wild Warg Chieftain, Druzhag behind him, the skull on top of his staff kinda stands out - these pictures are all with flash, so as always, the colours etc. are a little off.

Above is Durburz's side, plenty of small green bodies to throw at the troll =) The drummers keep a nice back-beat to the battle. Oh, and in the front right you can see "The Ring" we use that to give to whoever has priority for the turn. It was originally just a plastic thing, I based it on a bit of sponge with some lava to make it a bit more of a trophy.

And another top view, if you look closely you can see the miniatures on there. They're really only on the middle two boards, heaps of space to move around still!


Oh, and one last picture to show that the scale still works with other minis:

My Mad-Cat next to the lava pits and some "rock spire" made of painted tree bark.


Anyway, that's all folks.


I'll force my brother to come over and battle me soon and put together a pictorial battle report.


Overall I'm really happy with the board, if you look at some bits closely (I'm not going to tell you where) there are details I'm not 100% happy with, but I have a feeling it would take a VERY long time to get it all perfect.


The lava came up way better than I thought it would and I like it SOOOO much more than the skull pits!


A short list of the things I found out while doing it:


Water down your glue! The bottom layer is good full strength, but if you're going to layer glue on top as well (which I recommend for sand to stop it coming off so easily) make sure it's watered down. The patches that I did with full strength glue still stand out a bit. Some of that might be me being overly sensitive, but in any case.


For large areas I highly recommend using a sponge instead of a brush to apply paint. No streaks! You can still get good coverage by spongeing more than once.


Don't stress when something looks horrible with only a single coat of paint. Actually, don't even stress when you've done, for example, an undercoat, a white layer, a yellow layer and a red layer. The lava didn't look very good until the final touching up. The sand didn't look particularly good until it had the drybrushed layers too.


Use light coats of paint, that way if you do stuff it up you can just re-undercoat and start again! If you use big blobs of paint you'll lose texture.


Don't listen to people who think you're wasting time and/or money. If you're enjoying what you're doing then go for it and have fun - that's what hobbies are for!


Use the internet to share what you're doing! Ask for advice on forums or just plain show off =) The more people that share what they're doing, the bigger the resource for the rest of us who are starting off.


Anyway, blathering now, off to re-arrange miniatures and celebrate the completion of the project.


Oh, and for you 40k people, I only have two painted marines (and the bases aren't even done) but...

P.S. Yes, I know I still have the fortress to paint - but not right now, thank you very much!