Desert Gaming Board

[Anwolf]

Im making a desert gaming board to play small skirmishes and i was wondering if any1 knew how to make a good sand effect? Ill post a picture of what ive done so far in a few days time.

[kanan]

perhaps an interior emulsion paint of a suitable desert colour mixed with builders sand?

[Commander Sasha]

Make sure the sand is dry first, unless you want heavy texturing (not a bad thing).

I just made my first desert board with copious amounts of non firing clay: built drifts, walls and caves from the neat clay, used handfuls with very wet hands to smear over board. Gave texture and even a good starting colour, and as the bigger lumps dry they warp and crack, giving you hairline fissures that would be impossible to carve convincingly.

The shallow lumps smeared onto the board warped up at the edges leaving little shelfs 1-2mm off the board, the sort of thing little lizards scurry out from in nature documentaries.

I am very unskilled, but this came out very convincingly after just an hour of getting really mucky, and a day of drying.

A few washes to dirty it, and I'm done!

 

The clay gives such a uniform texture for both surface and set pieces that I now have a wilderness board with all the flexibility of a concrete/ruined buildings terrain.

[Starks333]

i use a drywall plaster+dirt mix, adding in powder pigment to colour it along with water as required...you get a paste with nice sandy texture...its also pretty sturdy as its meant for your drywall!

 

you can see an general idea in my army log, but it doesnt capture the texture that well in the photos

 

Alex

[Anwolf]

i found a bag of sand in my garage so ive used that on top of a desert yellow undercoat. Ill probaly do a few more boards like that as its not very big at the moment and ill make some sand dunes

 

http://i750.photobucket.com/albums/xx146/Anwolf1/DesertGamingBoard1.jpg