Stadium Renovation Pt. I: How to Make a Customized DIY Blood Bowl Pitch

My oh my, has this post been a long time in coming. Way back in 2012, when I first started this blog, one of my very first posts was about how I wanted to make a custom Blood Bowl pitch our of foam board.

A lot has changed in that time. For one thing, I picked up a real Blood Bowl pitch on the cheap. That meant that I didn't need a cheapo DIY solution anymore - if I was to make a custom pitch, I had better make it fancy.

For another thing, I happened to inherit a 2' by 3' whiteboard.

So over the next couple of posts I'm going to show you how I made the first thing out of the second thing. Note, however, that this technique can be used to great effect for skirmish boards as well, as Orlygg so aptly demonstrated here. I do, however, take it one step further, as you will see.

So, materials:

1. A whiteboard or bulletin board. Best if you inherit it, but they can be had for around $30 at an office supply store.
2. Foam Core. I chose this over Orlygg's plasticard because is is cheaper and can be easily carved to achieve squares (or cobbles, or whatever)
3. Some kind of filler. I used woodfiller.
4. A buncha PVA
5. Some sand
6. Craft paints
7. Screw-on rubber feet (optional)
8. Picture hanging wire (optional. If you dabble in sculpting like me then you probably have some around.)
9. Picture hooks. (optional)

So for the first step you'll want to prepare your foam core by stripping all of the paper off of it. Here's an astoundingly easy method for doing so. 

Once that's sorted out, you can smear some PVA onto your board. You don't actually need that much, but coverage is important. I used a scrap of cardboard as a kind of putty knife to get a smooth, even layer.

Lay the foam on there. Lay some books on there too. Some big, heavy ones.

Now let it dry for at least a day. 

Just like basing a mini. Imagine the cavalry figure that would go on that base.

When you come back it'll be time to fill, carve, and texturize the surface of the foam. The first part of that is easy. Just fill in the cracks with your wood filler/spackle/putty.

Next, you want to create the squares on the board. In my opinion, the best custom pitches have squares that are carved or cut into the surface rather than drawn or marked on. I find that more markings cause greater visual distraction, making it look more like your figures are playing on a board and less like they're playing on a hard-packed stretch of earth and crushed opponents.

So using a carpenter's square and a soft pencil, lightly sketch the grid onto the board. Follow over it with a ballpoint pen, pressing hard and scoring the line two or three times to get a nice deep impression. You'll want to keep using your square even though the lines are marked, because your pen is going to want to wander off course. (You could get really fancy and use an x-acto mitre to cut actual angled grooves like this, but I opted for the far simpler method - though my board is not nearly as impressive as Thib-0's. That guy can really craft.)

Once your grid is down, you can apply the sand. Pretty straight forward really, just watered down PVA and sand. Staple of the hobby. (Okay, I guess you could use coffee grounds or tea leaves if your worried about damaging paint jobs.

My workshop table, as sprawling as ever.

Now your board will look something like the above. You're going to have to walk away again, I'm afraid.

Once it's dry, it's time for paint. I didn't prime mine because I couldn't be bothered to mask the frame. You can do that if you like. Then hit it with a bunch brown craft paints and follow it over with washes of various yellows, greens and dark browns for a nice mottled effect. Finally, you'll probably want to drybrush it. It's a slog, though, so be warned.

Check out my proud coach's headgear top left.

Above you can see the beginning of the endzones and score tracks. Masking tape works okay, but be prepared to do a couple of thin coats (another staple of the hobby) since applying too much at once will result in the paint bleeding under the tape and requiring touch up (which is odious, and a pain).

I'll be back in the next installment with pictures of the painting and flocking process. In the meantime let me know what you think. Note, however, that getting fouled while in the comments box may result in penalty kicks.

Stone Walls: A Quick Tutorial

Today I would just like to share a quick method for building stone walls out of foamcore. It'll be a short tutorial, because the method is similar to that used in my Hard-Core Foamcore series, but with one KEY difference: I now know how to effectively peel the paper off of foamcore. 

Before, I had to use the paper to draw the template on and use it as a cutting guide before pain-stakingly peeling the paper off a little at a time so I could carve the foam underneath. But then I found this video, and it changed everything. 

For those who don't want to watch the video, the essence is this: You take a full sheet of cheap foamcore. You turn your shower on really hot. You soak the board under the shower, thoroughly. Flexing it around a little helps, but not too much otherwise it will snap. Then you peel the paper off in one or two gratifyingly massive sheets.

The whole thing takes maybe fifteen minutes, and you're left with a sheet of thin, easily cuttable, easily scribe-able foam.

How did I ever do without it?

So the first things I decided to make were some fieldstone walls. I layed out two layers of foam, one on top of the other, and cut them both to shape at the same time. Then I glued them together.

Once the glue was dry, I went in with a dull pencil and drew some stones. I added some texture using my fancy rock texturizer (a rock. From the ground) and slapped them on some plasticard bases. (While I was cutting the bases I also had the realization that you can use scissors to cut plasticard! Easiest terrain ever!)

Finally, I gave these guys a coat of watered down PVA so I could safely use spray primer. Total time spent building these could not have been more than a half hour.

Have you come across any simple techniques that have revolutionized your hobby process? If so, don't share them. Hoard the secrets to yourself; guard them jealously; allow them to come between you and your loved ones; take them to your grave.

Or write about them in the comments below.

Hard-Core Foam-core: Part Last

Light on the text today. This post is mostly just a picture dump of the painted results of my recent foam-core scenery. I am more than a touch pleased. 

These were primed gray, then hit with an overall black wash, as well as some brown and green in places. I then dry-brushed the stone up to a light gray; based the ground and wood with chocolate brown and mixed in white to dry-brush;  I then added some basing mix, a couple of bits of lichen coated in ground foam, and I was done.

I am quite a fan of the egg-shell ivy, though the color did come out a little garish. I tried, for the first time, using inks on it. The only problem was that the ink was 5+ years old and had formed into a sludgy, pigmented gloop. It took a good many washes of brown to tone that down.

I then went and drybrushed a little too heavily with the white, making for an overall unrealistic paint job. But I'm content with the vibrancy. I think it reads as ivy and draws the eye in a way that the more drab colors on the rest of the piece do not. It almost says: "The ruin is dead, but the land is alive." I might go back and touch it up one day. I might not.

Here's a picture to show how the pieces go together, inspired by those old citadel plastic ruins:

And finally, a pic of the foam core pillars after paint. Not half bad, even though you can still see the join in the foam.

Let me know what you think!

Hardcore Foamcore: Pillars

 

A quick post on an easy way to make a few characterful terrain "smalls." using left over foamcore. After cutting all the template pieces for my ruins, I found that I only had a little bit of material left over. Not enough for any real project... but just enough to cut into some rectangles and octagons to make some pillars for cover in skirmish games.

 

Also, since only one side of the foamcore would be visible, I could use a classic terrain building technique to reinforce the joins:



 

Simply lift one edge of the foam covering like so...



 

...And use it as a gluing surface for the interior of the joins. Quite strong when dry.

While the pillar quadrangles were drying, I glued the octagonal bases to some large fender washers for weight.


Finally, I peeled away all of the outside paper and used the same scribing technique as I used in my ruins, roughed them up with a rock for texture, and there you go:

These will be seeing paint soon, along with the ruins. (You can see a sneak peak at the right edge of the above photo.)

DO YOU FEEL STRONGLY ABOUT PILLARS? (Or terrain, or foamcore, or anything? ANYTHING?) If so please comment below.

Hardcore Foamcore: Ruins II

Continuing the series on *reasonably* realistic terrain made mostly out of foam core. Here is a picture of that first test building with the parts all assembled. 

The building went together pretty easily with some white glue and paper clip pins for strength. I am pretty happy with how the stone work is looking. I't not perfect, of coarse; you can see the line where the two foam layers come together, making the wall look as though it were made of two rows of stones. However, I feel that this minor flaw is balanced by how easy the stonework effect is to achieve. I'm also hoping that the painting stage will help to sell it.

As you  can see, I also textured the CD base with some sand:

You can see the foundation for a second section lurking in the background, alongside the omnipresent cairns.

I half built another section before realizing I should probably cut out all the components so I could build everything at once:

Two assembled ruins and 'various bits and pieces,' as Niel Shuck would say...

I traced the building parts onto the foam core sheet using a template I drew on graphing paper. I actually designed four unique corners...the templates just made it easier to draw the pieces to scale. Also, if I ever decide that my hobby will include resin casting, it would be handy to have those templates around to make a 'Fantasy Ruins' garage kit.

As anyone who has worked with foam core will tell you, the toughest part is actually cutting the bits out of the sheet, what with having to cut through three layers. Having a design that was full of greebly nooks and corners didn't help, but I felt they were essential to the feeling of detail. Next time I might just try peeling the paper off of one side of the sheet before I cut out the bits. Then, in theory at least, I might be able to cut each component out in one go.

Finally, it was time to add some further detail. I splintered up some coffee stirrers to use as broken rafters and scattered some of the splinters on the flags. Then I took a walk. And discretely made off with some bits of my neighbor's gravel driveway. This was for larger rubble to represent masonry that had fallen from the wall more recently, but had not yet been carried away by scavenging masons, or otherwise disturbed.

Stay tuned next time for the final details, some creative texturing, and pics of the other three sections. And as always, please comment. I like questions. I like criticisms. I also like jokes.

Leave your jokes here:

Hardcore Foamcore: Ruins I

This post is the first in a short series on some terrain that I've been making using foamcore. Today, I'll show you the first part in my take on that wargaming terrain staple, the ruined building.

This whole idea began when I stumbled across this amazing modeling project.

I realized this was the perfect opportunity to push my own limits of 'realism' in terrain, as well as an opportunity to prove that another cheap, readily available material can be used in place of harder-to-find media like EPS, or 'blue foam.'

What follows was my first test building. The plan was to make three more like this and base them on CDs so that they could be placed as individual ruins or together as one building.

A door wall, a window wall, a section for flagstones, and some buttresses.

The main problems with a lot of foamcore buildings that I see are that the surface often ends up featureless, and the edges tend to show. This bothers me because it breaks the realism.

To fix this, I decided I would peel the paper off, as suggested in the above article, so that I could scribe textures into the foam itself. However, in experiments I found that the foam became dangerously thin and fragile when I peeled the paper off of both sides. I decided that the best way to deal with this was to cut two of each piece and then peel the paper off of the opposite sides.

The exception, of course, was the floor. Only needed one of those.

Peeling the paper was a bit of a pain, but with patience and the blade of an exacto, I eventually lifted off the majority. Once that was done, I glued the paper sides together.



My walls in progress hanging out with my cairns in progress.

Once the walls had dried, I began scribing the lines of the bricks with the back of my exacto blade. I took this opportunity to also cut a slot for the window sill, which I made by cutting a coffee stirrer to size.


You can see that I've blocked out the spot for the buttress to the left of the window. I would later push this section in with the butt of my pencil for a more realistic join.

I then went through my brick layers and scored the lines for the individual bricks. I did my best to make them match up along the edges. I then went back through with a pencil and gently widened each of the scored lines. Finally, I went over each piece with a chunk of porous stone, to add some textural variance.

Here is the result so far. Stay tuned to see the rest of the building come together.