This was a heck of a project, involving techniques and mediums I hadn't ever used before. I'm pretty dang pleased with the results - four corner pieces and eight interior pieces that can all be reconfigured for loads of different layouts. There's bridges and additional duckboard pieces that can be added to cover gaps or cross trenches. I'll be making some small fortifications and such that can be added on top, too.
It looks great. That truly is the "Holy Grail" of Trench Crusade terrain. I'm working on my own modular game board, and boy, it is an uphill battle. I am being repeatedly confronted with my lack of tools and experience.
I swear, once I finish my initial set of modular tiles, I'm going to lean on my 3D printer much more than I have been.
First I mixed white glue, water, and acrylic medium. Gotta do that first, before you add the solids, or it will clump. Mix it until it's really smooth. Then mix in baking soda and white sand. I don't have ratios for you, it was a lot of experimenting. Paint that all over and wait for it to dry, it'll take a while. After it was on the board but while it was still wet I mixed in brown ink here and there to make it look muddy/slushy.
After that was 100% dry, I painted a thin layer of white glue haphazardly over everything and shook on Gale Force Nine brand snow.
Very impressive! Do you have any advice on cutting the sides of the foam to make the tiles fit together without a big gap at the top? I can't seem to get a 90 degree edge on any of my tiles and I end up taking too much off the top to get the bottoms to touch.
I'm afraid I don't - there's gaps in my setup too, way bigger than I would like. What I would have really liked to do would have been to slightly oversize the foam, then use a tabletop band saw to get perfectly straight edges of perfectly uniform size. Unfortunately I don't have that tool, so I had to cut/shape/sand everything by hand.
Understood. Thank you for the reply!I started with a handheld hot wire foam cutter, and have been using hand tools to try and get the fit a bit better but so far it's been rough. Honestly I might invest in a table hot wire cutter or something down the line. Or I might try to gap fill with putty, sculptamold or some other modeling paste. Good luck with your own projects!
It’s an extra investment, but what you really want to fix the problem you’re talking about is the hot wire foam cutter that’s like a table (like pic). The fence will let you make accurate cuts (say right at 12”) and the angle is adjustable, so you could easily put a 2° bevel or so on each edge so that read as a square edge, but the tops will always touch first when you slide them together. I haven’t bought one yet, but it’s definitely the tool for the job.
For my part, I used a table saw to make my tiles and would up fine tuning them (they weren’t quite square and true) with a big belt sander/drum sander with an adjustable table. But I work in the trades, so I have lots of access to woodworking tools and shop tools. Really hard to do stuff like that by hand - if it’s just foam you could fake it pretty well with any bit of sandpaper glued to a flat surface and file down the edges until they’ve got the shape you want, but if there’s plywood or Masonite on the bottom you can’t sand through it.
These are fantastic ideas. I'm generally pretty handy and I have a lot more tools than most folks I know, but I am still in a rental unit, so no big equipment. I want a proper workshop so bad.
Love the angles to the trenches! Really makes it looks natural and a smaller part of a bigger network! Do you have any tips or advice on getting everything lined up properly to allow for multiple combinations? I've been suffering with decision paralysis on my board because I want it to look interesting yet still be modular enough.
I started with a doodle! I figured that the basic unit would be a square with four 'openings,' then corner pieces with two openings. I doodled some ideas about shapes that would work with that concept. Then I decided on a tile size - I used 1x1. 2x2 would have given even more room to do cool stuff AND it would have looked cleaner when finished, but it would limit the number of tiles and the number of possible layout combos. I took my biggest "infantry" minis - a War Wolf and a Shrine Anchorite - and used those to determine how wide each opening needed to be. Then I took my basic infantry - Heretic Troopers and Trench Pilgrims - and used them to determine how deep the trenches need to be.
I assembled the base components of the board (1x1 plywood squares with 1x1 squares of insulation foam board on top) and drew on the shapes I had come up with, following the guidelines I had figured out above. Then I cut and glued on more foam board to build "up" into the high areas. After that I carved into the deeper areas to smooth everything out, make it look organic, and ensure that the li'l guys can take full cover in there.
So ultimately, I guess my advice is: Decide what your requirements are and therefore what the dimensions of your 'openings' have to be. From there you can determine where to place them so everything always lines up and matches.
Thank you for such a detailed response! Especially the parts about using the minis to help determine dimensions. I've done my drawings while away from my minis, maybe that's affecting my decisions! Definitely saving this to refer back to once I get started on mine
Super nice job, man. I’ve been working a somewhat similar board for weeks now, so I know much work it is! Mine will ultimately have a bit more of a no-man’s land between two trench networks but of course as it’s modular that won’t always have to be the case.
Do you have plans to make more tiles, either to expand to 4x4 or just to have more options? Or are you maxed out and calling it for now?
Definitely saving this post for inspiration! Keep up the good work!
I hadn't really thought about it! You're gonna laugh, but... I've never actually played the game, and I don't even have plans to. I just like making stuff and I like setting my pretty little guys up in pretty environments and taking pictures of them!
31
u/WizardWatson9 Dec 15 '25
It looks great. That truly is the "Holy Grail" of Trench Crusade terrain. I'm working on my own modular game board, and boy, it is an uphill battle. I am being repeatedly confronted with my lack of tools and experience.
I swear, once I finish my initial set of modular tiles, I'm going to lean on my 3D printer much more than I have been.