The Project Project

I had planned on just fudging terrain for the game from whatever I had to hand, painted or not. However the first scenario is set on a dock which reminded me that I have had an MDF cargo ship in my stash. Warren talked about it years and years ago so I bought one and never got round to doing anything with it. Maybe a wee table build was doable…

First I needed a raised platform for the docks. I have three pieces of 50mm thick insulation foam. Two pieces are 450mm wide; one is 300mm and the other 420mm on their other sides. Easy enough to cut down (almost straight) to fit my 700mm wide board. I have no idea how much play this will see so for ease of storage I’m not going to attach them to each other.

To hide the join line I came up with various plans but in the end I decided that it was more hassle than it needed to be. To make the dockside a bit more interesting I added some 3mm balsa wood pylons pinned in place with dressmaker’s pins which kind of look like massive bolts.

For the dock texture I decided to use a tub of Hobbycraft Concrete Paste which I have had sitting around for more than a year, just waiting for a project to use it on. The instructions say to apply it thinly with a brush or knife. I brushed it on and waited until it had started to set before going over it with a painting sponge, then a larger car sponge to try to minimise the sign of brush strokes. I was originally going to go over the pylons too but decided last minute that the wood would be more visually interesting and made more sense for boats to be bumping up against. I ran out of paste so one side of each platform is bare at the moment – I’ll add something to them to strengthen them if nothing else before the project is done.

This all got done over a few hours while staving off the Sunday Sads. Leaving it to dry overnight, it turned out pretty pale and one platform has a slightly different texture. One of the platforms had some left over grout and glue on it and the poster took to that surface better than the flat one. Next up is going to be washes but that’s for another day