Martian landscape gameboard

In the weeks since I last posted a game board here I have constructed a second one. This board is supposed to represent a Martian desert environment. As with the last board, it has no vertical elements glued on to the surface, in order to minimise storage difficulty. However, it is taller than the last board, as it uses 2 sheets glued together in order to provide the depth for a small trench that can be used during gameplay. In addition to this, the board is built around always having the large grey “habitat dome” (a large salad bowl).

Unlike the previous board, I did not use plaster to create a textured surface. Instead I mixed PVA glue with brown paint, play-pit sand and isopropyl alcohol and spread this over the board to add texture. This has the advantage of being much lighter than plaster, whilst also adhering much more strongly to the foam. The main downside is that unlike the plaster, which could be painted on ~2 hours after pouring, this mixture needs to set overnight before it is even close to being dry enough to paint. After drying, I painted the sand with a 1:1 mixture of brown and red paint, which gave a dark red-wine coloured sand. This was a bit darker than I had intended but I decided to go with it and covered the majority of the area with a VERY light orange dry brush using a large makeup brush. Lastly, spots of visual interest were added by adding a generous squirt of “European Dust” wash, which was spread with a brush as needed.

The trench interior was sealed using acrylic tile sealant, spread using a gloved finger but in retrospect it would have been better to just use the same sand/PVA mixture as the rest of the board, as it is very tacky and takes paint differently to the sand.

Unfortunatley I did not take any pictures of the build process for this board. Next week I will show some scatter terrain created for use with this (or any other) board.