Back to Black: Dwarf Hold Painted

Here we are yet again, this time with a painted board!

All of the boards then received a fine coat of black spray paint, which really sped up the process of painting. I paint my models by hand (even base painting) because I want to get a feel for the models and notice their details as I go. For something as large and "bland" as a battle board, I didn't feel the need to be that detailed, so the initial push was just to get some non-white and non-pink color.

A closer look: I intentionally didn't let the spackling be smooth on the surface to add some variety of terrain. The market court shown here has a mostly-smooth surface with some grout to make the tile look more interesting.

Two of my boards were spray-painted nearly a month ago (yeah, weather hasn't been good for spray-painting) and I got some detail work in on them, showcased here. Grey paint has been applied more densely in some areas than other to add variety to the table. The pathways are a mixture of brown and grey, adding a slight change of color from the rest of the terrain (also, each of the roads exits off the center of each board edge, allowing all four pieces of the board table to be adjustable once they are finished).

Here's an up-close look at the finished board. The brown paint has been applied more liberally on this town court with a black wash on the way to dampen the color a bit.

The plan is to have a working form of this table by the time the tournament comes. Speaking of tournament, I've been splitting my time working on another terrain project, showcased here - a display board for my army of Isengard! Though it's hard to see here, I've been doing some improvements to my crossbows (making them look more like Vrasku's crossbow), mass-manufacturing Uruk shields, and painting each unit with a green stripe on their bottom base for army unity. The board itself has a brown base coat and grey splotches where piles of ashes are ("BURN TO ASHES!!!").

Thanks to my fellow admin Zorro, I used a drill bit that cuts out circles in polystyrene (it probably has other uses, but that was the one I could think of). Given that the tool goes a little crazy when cutting through this material, the holes are large enough (or a little larger than) an infantry model, perfect for making sure that the unit looks like he's standing on the display board instead of on a raised platform.

I'm going to try to get one more army update before the tournament - not a lot left to do to the units, but a few paint jobs are in order.