40k realm of battle painting tips

[grantix89]

Hi all,

I am thinking about getting a citadel realm of battle board just so I have something proper to play on for a change. However I am a bit of a terrible painter so I am a bit nervous about painting it and don't want it to just be a grey slab of plastic!

Does anyone have any tips on painting them? I'm looking to paint in a grey cityscape style to put my imperial sector scenery on. All the tips for painting the boards seem to be to make them green...! Not useful!

Any ideas would be great!

Thanks all,

[SaveModifier]

I'd say that the Realm od Battle isn't your best bet for a city scape, its got a lot of slopes and stuff, if you can stretch your budget to the Forgeworld city realm of battle however, thats more like it.

Painting boards is very different from miniatures, you want a big house painting style brush and probably want to get a few grey and black acrylic paints from an Art and Craft shop, you'll probably been a few tubes of each colour you want, slap the paint on and use drybrushing over it to pick out the details

[grantix89]

Problem with the forgeworld stuff is it is sooo much more expensive. Instead of a board for £175, you are getting a board for £430 (of the same size) which is ludicrous. Even the regular realm of battle board is very expensive and on the verge of not buying because of cost. But I do take your point, the FW board would be far better for the cityscape stuff. But i think i can make the regular one work.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

As SaveModifier says: Don't bother painting it with GW paint, those tiny pots hold nowhere near enough. A much better bet is a hobby store (like Hobbycraft) where you can pick up a few tubes of acrylic paint, and then get some large brushes (the sort you'd paint a wall with). I did this and knocked out my RoB within about a day.

Helpfully, you can get great results just by applying a base colour and then drybrushing over the top of it, because of the textured surfaces. For an urban landscape, if you can find a dark grey then a lighter grey to drybrush over, you'll probably be surprised by how good you can get it looking. :)

[lattd]

You could always consider other game boards or make your own? I've made some flat grey boards but shy of 6 by 4 but they work well.

[grantix89]

How did you make them?

[lattd]

6 by 4 mdf board cut into 2 by 2 squares, one side add support to take the weight and make said support thick enough to support some form of connection mechanic. On top I just mixed sand with black paint two or three coats then went over it with different grays.

[Deadlift]

http://i844.photobucket.com/albums/ab3/joenortonjones/56de1f506bb53807979b269b050d7c54.jpg

I airbrushed mine and it took about an hour from start to finish. If you don't own one I could easily see using aerosol primer paint being an option.
I primed mine up and then just layered on dark grey, light grey and then white for the snow. The lava was airbrushed and would be a struggle with spray. The actual board wouldn't be too hard at all.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

That looks real nice, DL

[Tooze]

Frontline gaming has a nice alternative mat if your looking for a cityfight table

http://www.frontlinegaming.org/shop/frontline-gaming-and-tablewar-gaming-mat-urban-combat/

Very high quality job done, just got mine last week and its great work for the money.

[Thaldin]

I made my own gaming table. 4x4's for the legs, 1x2's for the support joists and 2x4's for the outside frame. They just laid a sheet of 3/4" plywood on it and textured it and painted it.

[Pssyche]

In the past I've painted City Ruin Boards with Tester Paint Pots from B & Q.
Take your paints to the shop, match your colours against the swatches and the tins of paint are a couple of quid a piece or thereabouts.

[SaveModifier]

I recently made my own table with modular 2x2 foot sections, its nothing amazing, but I like it, 10mm blue styrofoam is pretty cheap on ebay, i cut the roads out of one sheet and mounted them on another, cost about £40 in materials once i'd mounted each tile on mdf and painted it grey

http://i.imgur.com/DWx7CMql.jpg

I've since tidied up the edges to get rid of the blue showing through!

[interrogator_chaplain]

I recently finished my own arctic-themed RoB (http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?37515-Finished-arctic-Realm-of-Battle-gameboard!) back in November and I absolutely love the results I got out of it:
http://i.imgur.com/sk6roVYl.jpg

If I could do it again, I wouldn't use any GW products except for the snow flock, which worked far better than the Army Painter snow (It was basically white sand.) I also tried.

Basically, you're going to want to go to your local Wal-Mart equivalent and get the colours you want in acrylic (I think any acrylic is good, my base coat was a dark blue/grey latex acrylic.) You'll want a base coat, layer and then a highlight colour (Much like you would with your own models.) then, get yourself a few big cheap brushes to slather everything on, and then a few lighter stiff brushes for highlighting purposes.

Something that worked out fantastic for me was spray painting. A lot of the snow that you see above is spray paint and I think it worked out well, the rocks I used GW colours and if I could do it again, I wouldn't use GW, the results were good either way but cost me about $20 more than it would've to use something else. Grab some Testors or something, grey is grey.

Finally for special effect, I bought some water effects and added a few drops of Guilliman Blue glaze into the mix to achieve the look of ice, and after a few layers I got a fantastic result out of it with skulls trapped under the ice. (Who knows how many skulls litter the battlefield just under the snow!)

After I applied flock with a mixture of water and white glue, I sealed all of the tiles with 2 coats of Matte Varnish. I would highly suggest that you do this if you add flock or sand to your board, as it effectively glues it down to the board.

If you have any more questions, I'll get you answers, best that I can.

[Darren Richardson]

if your looking to make a board for gaming from scratch, I would recommend looking up articles on Model Railway baseboards, there are plenty of styles of baseboards all made from scratch you can chose from, and most of the techniques talked about also can transfer over easily to wargaming.

The information is all there on the internet for free as well, so you won't need to pay for any magazines or books.

Just did a quick search on http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=model%20railway%20baseboards&sm=3 there are tons of videos showing you how to make baseboards :)