Project Foy - Cut Profile And Elevation

Now that we have the terrain outline transferred to our game board, we can begin to contour. There is really no right or wrong sequence to do this, but I tend to start with one corner and work my way around. Contouring involves both adding and taking away material in order to go from a flat board to something that looks more realistic. In the case of Project Foy, you will recall that I had pictures from the actual location. If your wife does not happen to be traveling to your game location, the Internet is also a great source for pictures. In either case, viewing the landscape gives you something to compare your finished product to. In almost all cases you are going to need to sacrifice on distances between landmarks or objects. The idea though is to end up with a reasonable representation of the orginal.

Here is an example of a coutoured board. This is not Project Foy, it is one of the sections from our D-Day game, but in any case the details are the same.

You can see from this picture that we use trimmed polystyrene chunks to build elevation. In this case, we also used some natural material (larger rocks) to add character to the board. This picture actually represents the second step of the contour process. Before the poly chunks are trimmed, we rough fit them in place to make sure the profile will be correct. This is a trial-and-error process. Don't be too concerned if you end up forming a piece a couple times. Once a good profile is acheived, the chunks are glued in place. We use "Liquid Nails" for this purpose. You will get best results if you allow the glue to dry over night before moving on.

The picture below is a good example of taking away material. This is from one of our Queen Anne's Revenge game boards. This will end up being the second dungeon level. In a later post, I will show you how we created basements for the buildings on Project Foy.

You can use just about any tool to cut your contour. A dry-wall saw is good for making rough, long cuts. Finer cuts can be made with a Japenese Ryoba saw (you can see one lying in the upper right corner). We use the type with teeth on two sides. This saw with fine or very fine teeth makes a very precise cut. When coarse steel wool is dragged across the poly board, it makes a nice random terrain pattern. This method can be used (after some experimentation) to make the type of natural column you see in the middle of this picture. We have also gone as low tech as a handsaw or butcher knife.

During this process you might end up covering some of your transfer lines, so be sure you recreate any important features at their final elevation. Our next step will be to rough finish the entire game board ....