So I won a copy of Hivestorm in a raffle...

So, how do you go about making a board like this? A mighty fine question with as many answers as their are terrain makers out there I imagine… But here is how I am going about it.

Step one.

With the major terrain elements glued down I needed “floors” within those building to look like they, at one point, had a proper floor.

My mind works in trying to add layers to this project. So I wanted to start with the man made elements before adding the environmental elements (ground textures and the like)

For the building floors I took an A4 sheet of 1.5mm plasticard and started to scribe random lines on it with a craft knife, then breaking it up into those parts.

After that I took a pencil and drew out the parts of the buildings footprint that the terrain kits miss out. This gave me a way to define where the buildings footprint would still exist before it was destroyed.

It may be a minor change in texture, but I feel it helps add a little depth to the board. One of those “the closer you look the more you see” kind of approach.

The table layout is solid, but I wanted to add a little storytelling.

For that I took a toy tower crane I bought off Wish a while ago with the intention of making a Gundam diorama. That idea has yet to take off and since the cranes came two in a box I technically had this spare.

So with the liberal application of my foot, I managed to break the crane into sections that “drape” across the back end of the board.

I like this element a lot as it eludes to an attempt to repair these building before something happened that led to the area being abandoned, and, perhaps, over time, the crane corroded and collapsed across the buildings it was once set up to repair.

I will elaborate further on the board narrative as I continue to explore the idea of an abandoned area that was once a warzone.

With the man made elements on the board, I felt it was time to prime it all in black.

I did this so that when I begin to add rubble and ground texture it will have a surface made to hold the material and the COPIOUS amounts of PVA glue I would need to seal it down.