…I’m alive honest! Finally go back to do some modelling after a long hiatus due to family illness, baby daughter & my bathroom trying to drop into my kitchen (note: hidden cisterns are a recipe for disaster!).

Anyhoo so my local gaming cafe (Tabletop Cafe – www.tabletopcafe-edinburgh.com) decided to run a Blood Bowl league now that GW have released the new edition (5th Ed apparently). So desperate to do some terrain making, and having the excuse that i don’t need to make up a team (Go Ponies:) I decided to make a 3D Pitch for them.

So i went with 35mm squares (5th Ed pitch has 34mm squares but i’m neither mm accurate, or can multiply by 34 in my head) as this seemed like the best compromise, and tried designing the pitch to be as small as possible. It took me about a month to build around life requirements (Work, Baby, PS4 Skyrim you know important stuff) but i’m pleased with how it came out, anyway in progress pictures here:

It all starts as a doodle, at least for me.

20x45mm Pine Frame

6mm ply added (i had three small sheets hence the extra framing in the pitch section

25mm pine strip edging

Marking out

Frame to pitch square position and height

Started inserting the styrofoam

Making out the pine for dremelling

Kept the pitch depth down by dremelling squares into the pine

Layout roughed out

Roughed out square depths

Squares all carved out of the styrofoam

Detailing the ‘river’ edges

Detailing the dugouts

Broken tiles made from thick card

Subtle pitch markings added with coffee stirrers (note: I did but don’t bother buying these)

Broken tiles coseup

BROWN blobs!

Couple of gravel test pieces to make sure i could still see the square edges after painting

Mostly textured pitch

Completly textured pitched, did the turn tracks in just sand so it would be smoother for adding numbers later

Brown!!!

I love how simple drybrushing makes terrain look

Detailing added to pitch

Dugouts with 3D printed coffins (as miniature coffins don’t exist)

Bloody docterin tables in the knockout section

Drawing in the numbers with a stencil & white pencil

Painted & washed broken tiles

Started the flocking

Painted in the numbers red as a base colour, then went over them again later in bone/white

And the finished article:

Finished pitch

Water effect on the broken tiles

Dugout 1

Dugout 2

Prancing Ponies setting up for a drive

And the team ‘staff’ looking on

Square heights down to the river

And from the front

The side line heights from the from

Dugout 2

Dugout 1 with the coach working out tactics for next drive

Cheers

Nick