Building Stones River Battlefield, Part 1

My friends and I have started building our layout for The Battle of Stones River(Link) game that we are putting on at Historicon(Link). We are a little tight for time, 19 days, cause at the last minute we decided to go for an elaborate sculpted table as opposed to a drop cloth and some trees and hills.

Nothing wrong with the drop cloth route, we've done it a hundreds of times, but we just decided to go all out. So from now until July 15th, we've got a lot of work to do.

I'll be taking some works in progress pics as I go. I hope you enjoy the ride. So here we go.

The good folks at Home Depot supplied us with 4 2x8 sheets of insulating foam.

Uhm, my car can't fit an 8 foot sheet! As our table is 5x8 we cut off 3 feet of the board in the parking lot.

Got the foam laid out, cut to size, we are ready to go.

Laying out Stones River

 

River and hills marked

Now to make a huge mess. Using a Stanley Surform I begin excavating the river bed while Lou starts cutting hills.

Hills done, base river course done, now we both go back over the river to get the depth we need. Foam is all over my basement.

Using sandpaper we smooth down the river and widen the banks. Need more sandpaper. As abrasive as the sandpaper is to the foam, the foam shreds the sandpaper right back.

Now the hills have to be surformed down to a playable level, more foam bits everywhere. I got 4 done, but at this point I had to call it a night. Lots more to do, we've only just begun.

Xin