Building new terrain for my Wargaming Board - Rivers Terrain

Since I want to start gaming at home as well as my local hobby shops, I have decided to build my own gaming table from scratch.  This also will give me some projects to do, because I don't have that much terrain at home, so I will be making a lot of terrain of the next couple of weeks,

Medium Density Fiber Board (MDF)

I have to wait till next week to purchase the materials to make the table, so this weekend I decided to start on some of my terrain pieces.  I have always liked having some type of water features on my tables, so I decide my first terrain feature for the table would be a river that could run the width of the board.


Off I went down to my local Home Depot, and I picked up a 1/4 in. x 2 ft. x 2 ft. Medium Density Fiber Board (MDF).  I really like working with this stuff as its easy to cut and shape, and sands very well.  Basing the MDF is easy, and really stands up for using it as terrain.  Its also heavy enough that it will not easily move if the table is bumped.



So I started of today drawing out my shapes of each section.  I decided that I would have 4 straight section, each being 1 ft. in length, and two corner sections.  This will give a lot of variety of choices when placing the river sections down on the table.  Once I got the layout drawn out, I realized I had enough material left over to also cut out 3 round bases that I will use for other projects.  Maybe I will use them for maybe a swamp piece, or forest pieces of terrain.  Below is the pieces after I got them all cut out.  I borrowed a jig saw from my brother, and it made short work at cutting all the pieces out.

All pieces cut out, and bonus terrain pieces from left over material.

My next steps for the pieces was to bevel all the edges for the pieces would not have the flat edge to them.  Only where the pieces butt together was left straight.  I just used a utility knife and a sanding block to make nice clean beveled edges.  This will help the pieces blend more into the table when placed on the board for play.  Below are several images of my progress on this step.

Pieces with the edges beveled and sanded

For each joint I tried to match the bevel as best I could, I'm no professional, lol.

My next steps will be to base and paint the pieces to make them look like river sections.  I will be doing a followup post when I'm done with those steps, but will take pictures as I go like I did for this post.

Until next time, keep on gaming, and may your dice always be blessed.