Wargaming on a Budget- Making a Game Board

 Welcome back all. 

Many of you know that I had a long period of my life where wargaming was barely part of it.  I was locked out by cost!  This period led me to lean into something I call DIY (Do-It-Yourself) wargaming, or wargaming on a budget.  It is still a part of the hobby that I hold onto closely in my heart.  

A while ago, I had a short post about how to Wargame on a Budget to make a board look good.  I want to go back and revisit that idea.  Lately, I have been playing games of Games Workshop's Kill Team game with the True Crit Gaming Guild.  Thankfully, one of our members managed to get in good with the local GW Rep and get us some good resources to start, but we soon outgrew the couple of boards we got from them.  Therefore, we needed some more 30 x 22 inch boards for our Kill Team group!  

I decided to step in to create some terrain for myself, that I could share with the group on game day.  I actually started this process by using a 6x4 city terrain mat from Cigar Box Battles.  It looked great, but was much bigger than what we needed for a game of Kill Team.  I also used one of the group Project Social days to make a reasonable set of DIY "futuristic city terrain" out of found materials and printed accessories.  

Amazing what some cheap big box acrylic paint, styrofoam, printed images, and a good mat can do!

However, I wanted to try and build a quick and easy board for Kill Team that was modular and called back to the Gallowdark/Space Hulk boards.  However, I wanted to do it all with found materials only.  Today, we will take a look at the first major step in that project, we are going to make the 30 x 22 inch game board.  

The first challenge was that Kill Team used a 30 x 22 inch game board, when a standard sheet of Foam Board or similar display boards were 28 x 22.  I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I am almost 100% sure the size difference was not an accident.  Therefore, I had to hunt for an alternative base.  I managed to find it with a big box of corrugated cardboard. 

I traced out the size I wanted, and cut two pieces of 30x22.  Why two pieces and not just 1?  Well, corrugated cardboard will warp.  Therefore, to prevent warping, I cut out two pieces and glued them together with simple adhesive.  This was to just give the board some additional strength.   

Those of you old grognards out there will probably recall an old article G-Dub did called Cardboard City.  This was around the time of the first Cityfight Codex.  Well, that article had a great tip for using cardboard.  

To cover the unsightly edges, you needed to cover them with masking tape!  Brilliant.  That is the next step of our board! 

Once that is done, now comes the fun part!  Time to detail!  Go out and find a whole bunch of boxes from cereal, oatmeal, and various other products that use that thin cardboard.  You know the stuff!  

Cut this out into a variety of small squares and shapes you like.  Take regular adhesive and glue these all over the top of your board.  In addition, find any other fun little items that strike your fancy such as straws, tongue depressors, sand, sprue bits, bits of screen, whatever!  Go crazy!  Use these to detail the board by gluing them to the playing side of it.   You want to make it look like more than just a flat piece of cardboard.  However, you want to put enough on, but not too much.  You don't want it to get in the way of putting your terrain on top, just enough to give your piece of board some texture and favor when you paint it.  

Once all of that is done, you are ready to paint.  First step is to give it a simple undercoat of grey primer.  This can be any old primer since you are not trying to make a detailed piece.  No need to use the expensive stuff you use on miniatures here!  Give it enough coats so the colors from any original packing material does not show through the primer.  

Once it is primed, you can go about giving it some rough coverage.  The easiest way is to either use spray paint or some cheap big-box acrylics.  It works best if you use a color that is a bit darker than the original primer.  Then just slop it on messily and let it dry for a few hours or overnight.  Then, go back and highlight the texture pieces with a lighter color than you used as the primer, again just using cheap, large brushes and big-box retailer acrylics.  

Now that those two steps are done, you are ready to move onto some detail work.  Again, no need to do anything fancy here.  Just use cheap big-box brushes and acrylics to paint out some details to make the base board POP!  Some red here, some green there, a splash of metallic colors on some sprues, etc.  Enough to give your board some character, but not overshadow the terrain or the models you are going to put on top of it.  

Congratulations, you now have a 30x20 play board for your games.  It is just big enough where you can easily carry it around and store, with just enough detail to make it look good.  If all goes according to plan, this probably took a weekend or two.  Plus no one else has a game board like yours! 

Next time on Wargaming on a Budget, we will start to build some simple walls to put on the board for quick and effective terrain!  Keep the materials you used for this project, as you will be using them again for the next phase!         

Until then! 

Become a Patron and get access to all the cool stuff, a peak behind the curtain of Blood and Spectacles, and early-access to playtest games!  

Blood and Spectacles Patreon! 

You can follow Blood and Spectacles Facebook page or Instagram for more fun! 

Check out the latest publications and contact me at our Blood and Spectacles website

Or purchase all out games at the Blood and Spectacles Publishing Wargames Vault Page!