I love the Lost Abbaye board but it has a major drawback, the playing area is way too small for anything other than small skirmish games. It’s made of 6 square modules of 1 x 1 ft (30 x 30 cm). In this project, I decided to add three modules to make it a 3 x 3 ft (90 x 90 cm) playing area.
Here is the step-by-step guide on how I built and painted this extension over one week-end.
1. Wood frame and basic topography
After gluing the MDF frame together, I cut a few pieces of styrofoam to make the basic topography.
2. Roughcast
To smooth the transition between the block of styrofoam I covered it with roughcast. After drying it becomes rock hard and it also helps to protect the styrofoam when painting with spray can.
3. Sand and gravel
To finish texturing the surface, I added sand and gravel, glued with diluted PVA.
4. Priming
The secret for this project to fit over a week-end was to use spray can for painting. But as you know the solvent used in spray can will dissolve styrofoam. So before painting, I used a special primer from Montana Colors to protect the styrofoam.
5. Pre-shading
Now was the fun part. Like a graffer, I used several spray can paint from Montana Colors and others.
For my friends in France, I recommend you to take a look at Allcity website, they have all the colors you can dream of and their customer service is really good. My friend David from Grosaquet is now an absolut fan of their products 😄 We could form a #streethobby gang I think
6. Highlighting
To get finer detail, I used airbrush to highlight the rock especially.
I ended up adding a cliff backdrop too. It gives more depth and height to the board.
7. Grass and trees
Final touch was adding static grass using my electrostatic applicator.
I enjoyed a lot how fast and smoothly this project went. I find working on nature terrain way more relaxing than urban terrain. I should focus more on this and it already makes me want to extend this modular board deeper into Mirkwood territory.
Matt
Simple as WaR 
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