Some of you may recall the big memoir 44 overlord table I worked on with some friends earlier this year.
Topic on that here:
https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=145045.msg1852917#msg1852917I made over 5 meters of river, and half that again in channels! You'd think I'd be sick of it by now, but I apparently really am a Dutchman at heart. So I still had a lot of materials left over or easy to acquire, and I had this prototype for my first rivers from nearly a decade ago.
Which frankly looked more like a coast like than a river.... You see where this is going. I took the long size of my base material (document folders) and started drafting a modular coast in that size, experimenting with some variants and modules and trying to figure out of it would work in multiple scales.
And then spend way to long humming and hawing about the with of the segments. I wanted it to be wide enough to feel like a big body of water, coastline or large lake at least. But also, unless the game has aquatic or flying units, its "dead space" in effect just a indicator that that part of the table edge can't be used to enter/leave. So spending too much room in it would be a shame as well.
In the end I took the easy route and decided my paper drafts were fine and started the next step, doing one full prototype start to finish with as many of the planned features present as possible. In this case that means cliffs, rocky shores and beaches all. I'll try to keep a tutorial ish guide of my proces here:
Step 1.
I noticed that the channels I made were much less likely to warp then the rivers, even though the channels were narrower than the rivers. The most likely factor here are the taller solid sides I gave them. Simple matchsticks and poly filler. Not wanting to change a wining formula, I'm using this as the "back bone" of my coastal modules as well.
First document folder thoroughly sanded and cut to a wavy shape, I glued the matchsticks down with two part epoxy, as well as tree bark for the cliffs. After that came the rocky sections, simply sand glued down with PVA. I also filled gaps between the cliffs with some sponge, added two stones along the cliff and sealed all that with watered down PVA.
Step 2. The back of the cliff was given a simple hill with foam and filler, and the whole thing got a black and grey zenithal style priming. I make sure the black goes into all the cracks and crevasses so inevitable missed spots of paint will just be dark, and the grey helps give texture, is easier to paint blue, and honestly the rocky shore is near done like this.
Step 3. Cliffs and rocks got very thin leperd spotting color modulation and a drybrush, the sea is blue, and I shaped some sandy beaches and blended their color into the waters.
Step 4, the dirty one. I have a good tub full of my special goop. Its a mix of cheap poster paint, PVA glue and a couple of grits of sand. Getting this mix just right so it dries matte, textured and a bit flexible takes a lot of mixing and adjusting, hence the tub full of it. Onto the banks it goes, hiding those matchsticks for good. It has a strong cohesion, wanting to form rounded edges like water on a hot plate. I tease the sides flat with a clean brush, and make sure to get it into the rocky sections as well, otherwise it ends up looking like, well, goop scooped on top of it.
Step 5. Once dry, there were a few small spots to fix with more goop. Nice thing about this stuff is that if you have a particularly rough section you can break away the large grains of sand, and the stuff left behind will still be the same color. This makes this method not so much durable, but wear and tear doesnt show up as much on it. Spot fixes done and dry it got a quick drybrush to show that texture. Right side not done yet in this pic. I also widened the sandy parts a bit, as the goop hat eaten up its with.
Step 5b. Nice thing about drybrushing is that its dry right away. So I glued down very fine beach sand next. Actual beach sand, cause its cheap. Once dry it got a watered down PVA seeped trough to seal it all in.
Step 6. The wet one. The final thing I did today, gloss modge podge stippelend over the bits wot should be wet. I spend a good 15 minutes debating with my partner if tracing the coast line would add convincing wave pasterns, she won and I skipped that step.
So with that drying for the night again, I should also note that I've been making more bridges to cross those channels from before, intended to fit with my 6mm road network as seen here, (also note my much too wide older rivers). and a culvert entrance so I can have the channels start mid table. Printed and painted they turned out quite brill, but haven't had a chance to roll out the grass mat and take pics of them in use, so stay tuned for that as well. How relevant is that? Well obviously I'm going to make some modules for the rivers and channels to flow into the sea while I'm at this!