New river boards

As indicated earlier this year, I decided, that I needed to do some new terrain. But to be honest the one thing that I made top priority was new river pieces. So much so, that I actually tackled this mission last year. 😉 Why? Well you might remember, that I remodelled my terrain boards and along with it, the hillside pieces (which I also used for my rivers). Which meant that I flocked the hillsides over with staticgrass to make them more robust. Back when I did that, I looked at streams around here and many had grass down to almost the waters edge, so I thought I could live with it, but to be honest… I could not. This is what it looked like, and frankly, it looked *bleep* IMHO.

The old look by combining he hillside pieces with varnished boards

So now it was on to something new. So I took pink foam (which is only available in very strange sizes here in Germany, so it involved an awful lot of re-cutting to even get the boards to my normal 50cm x 50cm size) and carved the banks out. They were sanded, glued to varnished HDF boards painted first with structured paint and then in browns and greens, flocked and the other normal bells and wistles. I also added bushels of pigs fair to simulate reeds growing in the water and some grey ballast for rocks in the river that have surfaced due to slightly low water levels. All in all, enough boards to fill almost my whole table (at minimum size though). And here they are (I deliberately left any other terrain off the boards for these photos):

Riverboards

Riverboards

Obviously there are a number of regular straits and the same applies here. They are slightly bendy, have mildly sloping banks (to make fording tanks still look good) a bit of driftwood and the already mentioned reeds and rocks. There are also four 90° bends to make sure I make the river flow anywhere on the table.

Riverboards close up

Riverboards close up

Riverboards close up

But I also wanted some special boards. The most simple one is the swampy board. Actually, this is pretty simple. I made the river pretty wide, roughened the water up a bit along the banks and added more reeds and here it is.

Tau Stealth suits on the swamp board

But one also needs places to cross the river. Up first is the short bridge. Now this one was actually quiet simple, since I simply recycled my old bridge and fitted it into the new river.

Bundeswehr on the small bridge

And then there is the ford to replace the improvised old version you could see in the first picture. Again, the ford area was roughened up, painted slightly different, rocks and reeds and it was done.

Byzantine cavalry crossing the ford

The ford board

So to come full circle, why did I not post pictures earlier? Well I wanted a new larger and more impressive bridge. But I did not have the time to do this until last week. The board itself was done last year and I only left the cut-out to fit the bridge in. So last week I finally did the bridge. I cut some of the pink foam left-overs from last year up and carved stones out. I have to say, this is the first time I have ever carved anything out of pink foam and I was a bit anxious, but I am really happy with the results.

Königstiger on the large bridge

Napoleonic French crossing the large bridge

This will not be quiet the end to my river project. There will be simple wooden bridges, pontoon bridges and the likes, but those will be build in a way that they just fit the straits. And there will be a dedicated board with a water mill, but I am not sure when I will find the time to do that!

Well, hope you liked this. Now on to the next terrain project!