Ghost Archipelago Island Board

[_Si_]

Hi folks. It's been a minute since I posted on here, but I've recently given myself a kick up the arse to start documenting my projects on my site again, and thought you might like to see one of my fairly recent projects.

The vast majority of my gaming is done at lunch times at work (well, you know, usually), so when I start getting interested in a new game my first thought is usually how do I get it to the office. As such I'm shying away from modular terrain in recent years.

Anyway I wanted to do an island board for GA and wanted it transportable. So I did my usual thing of turning to a past table and chopping it up

I still need to sort out all the actual trees and stuff, but as an actual base board I'm really happy with it.


Started like this:


...add a few herbs, a bucket of sand, and lots of static grass...

Ended like this:



The water was my first real attempt at doing anything other than priming with my air brush, and I'm pretty happy with the result. The rocks are just real rocks, not a lot of weight to the board anyway. The raised middle sections pop off and fit into the beach areas so the whole thing can be closed up and carried:



My (newly refreshed, ooh, ahh) website has a full project log on it. I'm currently catching up on things I already built on there, but once I do and I'm actually documenting stuff in real time I'll be sure to post them here as well of course.

Island board pt 1
Island board pt 2

Appreciate any feedback as always. Hopefully I'll have an update with some actual trees and foliage at some point.

Cheers,
Si

[Bloggard]

outstanding 

looking forward to the addition of trees and foliage - and how that works with the portability aspect.

[_Si_]

Thanks! Yeah figuring out how to get the trees portable will be the trick. Something to do with magnets and a bit I suspect.

[gnomehome]

Outstanding idea - I might try to copy it. Now I need to find a suitable paste table locally.

[_Si_]

Thanks! I don't know where you're based, but I used this one
https://www.diy.com/departments/foldable-pasting-table-l-1780mm-w-560mm-h-740mm/819258_BQ.prd
Because this board is the reverse side of my x-wing board I actually had already chopped it down to be smaller, but I've done others without chopping it.

Also on this one I used a piano hinge down the middle, but you could just use the existing hinges and make it join on the long side rather than the short. Like this (my other in progress frostgrave board)

[Bloggard]

cripes, your other frostgrave board ... going to be spectacular (I'm assuming some water features are still to be done?)..., well, already is ... !

[_Si_]

Thank you! Yeah it's a little further along than that photo, but the water features still aren't done I want to do them with resin, but the only few times I've done it they've shrunk on me so I'm nervous.

I really need to get a project log for that one up on my site too!

[Bloggard]

probably not a craft-y enough approach for you - but have you considered crushed velvet?

it's works really well as really low foot(fin?)-print 'water, and is very flexible (i.e. no need to glue it down, and thus could use different shades for different environments).

for example with your GA board (if all the islands are removable?), you could create a swamp board (with greenish crushed velvet) using different foam land pieces to those shown above, and ... etc.

[_Si_]

Never thought of using crushed velvet, but some googling definitely shows what you mean. However just before you replied I'd been doing some googling and have already ordered some gloss mod podge (the matte stuff is already part of my toolkit).

I'm aiming for this, which the guy did with paint and then mod podge, no resin pour at all!


(definitely not my work, click the link to see his thread)

Oh and no, on the GA board everything's fixed in place.

[Bloggard]

well, the modge-podge looks great, and if you're keeping the main components fixed no reason not to go for such like. Looking forward to seeing more.

[scatterbrains]

 

this is next level portability!

[M.O.T.N]

Great stuff!

[_Si_]

Thanks!

I thought I'd update it a little, I think this brings us up to date with where my board currently sits.

To get the crews to the island I wanted a boat. So I ended up scratchbuilding my own pirate sloop. Really happy with the result. (Feels a bit weird having this done but no crews assembled yet though)

More photos and rambles

And here's how the jungle foliage is going to go I think. It needs ground cover and static grass so it blends with the board. Then I'll try washing the plants to see if I can make them look less plastic whilst avoiding having to paint them all, we'll see how that goes.

Blog post on my site

I've always had project adhd, constantly jumping around. I think the last project I 100% finished was the Praetorian Army I built for Band of Brothers over on AmmoBunker and that was 9 years ago! But I would like to get this board finished, a couple of crews painted and actually have a game of F:GA!

[Bloggard]

fantastic boat. 

again, eager to see more !

[scatterbrains]

"i wanted a boat so i scratchbuilt one"

Lol you make it sound so simple! Lovely looking sloop!