A forest board, Mirkwood-inspired

[Burgundavia]

I've been dreaming of doing a forest board for a long time - watching inspiration and collecting stuff I might need. Part of my inspiration comes from a video Nat 1 did a little while ago:
https://youtu.be/K4MINXmvfe8


He visited Devils Chapel Scowles in that video, which was one of the inspirations for Mirkwood. I also looked at a lot of pictures of Puzzlewood, a similar forest also in the south west of England.

What I really love about this forest type is the mixture of vertical elements and flat floor, which makes it very wargaming friendly.

Photo credits
1st photo -  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzlewood#/media/File%3APuzzlewood_(Andy_Dingley).jpg
2nd photo - https://flic.kr/p/Vz7VEn

[Burgundavia]

For my board, I wanted to plan storage a bit better than my hellscape board, which is a nightmare is a store. So I measured the two crates that I have, which are roughly 12"x18". So that meant 6 6x6 tiles per row.

So I did the math and decided to build all my tiles to very specific dimensions - either 1", 2", 3" or 5" tall

This meant my two boxes would have the following layers:
1"
2"
2"
5"

And
2"
2"
3"
3"

So that means I can build the following:
6 x 1"
24 x 2"
12 x 3"
6 x 5"

[Burgundavia]

And now to the actual build! As with my other boards, these are built on an Open Lock tiles and the foam on top. I wanted to make sure these were more playable than my hellscape tiles, so I grabbed a big mini on a 40mm to make sure there would be space.

I built the first 15 tiles with  a 2" height - that felt like a good compromise of playability vs storage.

And some pictures:

[Burgundavia]

Once the first tiles were built, it was off to painting. I did these very simply, knowing that almost all the paint would be covered by flock or ground cover - black base coat, white/grey/black on the rocks, roughly splotched on, burnt umber for the forest floor.

And then to flocking/ground cover. The forest floor is all tea  - mixture of black tea, rooibos and honeybush. The honeybush is the small stick-like pieces, with both black and rooibos being fairly fine. It looks good, but I think I want to darken it a little bit and maybe try adding some of my dirt/grout mixture to make it look a bit more dirt like. The flock on the rocks is Woodland Scenics green turf blend.

[Burgundavia]

And with the first set done, into their first game they went  - combined with my hellscape in a Mordheim game involving some bad bears

[Burgundavia]

With the proof of concept done, time to do more tiles. One of the things I wanted to do was a river, so I designed a tile that let me have a consistent connection edge. But first I wanted to correct a long-standing problem that my existing tiles have had - they dont stack nicely.

My tiles were all designed to be 1", 2" or 3" high. But that meant that when you stacked them up, the height of the Open Lock tiles (7mm) meant 2 tiles were 2"-7mm. So I needed to edit my tiles to be x"+7mm, to account for this overlap.

Diagram for clarity:

[Burgundavia]

And so, a river was made. It is still unfinished, because I'm not 100% sure how to finish it. I also added another 21 tiles to get up to 36 tiles (enough for a 3'x3' board). With my storage sorted these new tiles are a mixture of 1", 2", 3" and 5" (well, 4.75, same height as the Terrain4Print giant trees I printed)

[voltan]

Looking great already.

[Citizen Sade]

Great stuff, I approve.

The Forest of Dean seems to have been inspiring a number of people lately. The woods there are magical places. I recommend visiting, if you can, particularly when they're not full of kids and tourists.

[Mammoth miniatures]

Beautiful work - the overall effect is wonderful.

[fred]

Great work, once you add the green flock to the rocks they suddenly become super realistic.

Must admit I was expecting more trees for Mirkwood!

[Burgundavia]

Great work, once you add the green flock to the rocks they suddenly become super realistic.

Must admit I was expecting more trees for Mirkwood!

I do have trees too. I have the large trunks and am working on a gnarly old tree as well

[Patrice]

 

Superb, and inspiring, thanks.

I don't know this place, but if you wish to add a deep valley with a stream or small river below they are such places in Brittany, one large one in Huelgoat and some others. They are called "chaos granitique" in French (granite blockfield?)

https://www.geopark-armorique.fr/point-d-interet/foret-et-chaos-granitique-de-huelgoat/#
https://www.brittanytourism.com/destinations/the-10-destinations/heart-of-brittany-kalon-breizh/huelgoat/

[YPU]

Oh yes thats a very nice type of terrain we don't see nearly enough of! I think the name "mossrock fantasy" was bandied about for a while, feels fitting.

I do wonder if a bit of deadfall on top of the flatter rocks wouldn't help tie them into the ground more? Its definitely something I see in your reference images.

[mikedemana]

Off to a great start. I should probably plan my terrain sizing for storage better, but sometimes I get so focused on effect I forget that it has to be stored on a shelf or in a box somewhere...! 

Mike Demana