Painting the Games Workshop Realm of Battle

As I mentioned the other day, I finally broke down and ordered the Realm of Battle set from Games Workshop. This is a set of 6 2' x 2' hard plastic terrain squares that lock together to give you up to a 4 x 6 foot gaming table that can be arranged in a number of configurations. I bought mine on-line from Gorilla Tactics for $230 shipped, which is close to $100 off the retail price. If you look around long enough, you can find similar deals.

My goal was to paint this as efficiently as possible. I had some ideas, but wanted to try them out on a single test board first. I also kept track of the time it took me.

Here's the line up of paints I used. The black and khaki sprays provide the basecoats and allow me to get away with not brushing on the base layers. The Apple Barrel and Delta Ceramcoats (you can really use any of the acrylic brands) are more cost effective paints for large scale jobs like terrain and scenery than using Citadel paints. I really only used Citadel colors on the skulls.

First, I sprayed the crevices and cliff faces with my standard black primer. (2 minutes)

Once the black dried, I hit the rest of the board with Rustoleum Camouflage Khaki. I tried to be as careful as possible not to go over the black areas too much. However, you can see that it does result in some nice overlap and blending. (5 minutes)

After a couple of days, I got some more time to finish the board. I used a 2 inch edging roller (right) to apply a highlight coat of Apple Barrel Sandstone. I also had a brush in hand to help feather some of the paint. (8 minutes)

Once the sandstone was dried, I started painting the crevices and cliff faces with Delta Ceramcoat Black and gradually mixed some white to blend the highlights through medium grey to light grey. This step probably took the longest. (15 minutes)

When the cliff faces were dried, I used some Citadel Dheneb Stone (Foundation) to basecoat the skulls and bones (2 minutes), Citadel Gryphonne Sepia (Wash) for shading (2 minutes), and then Citadel Skull White for highlights (2 minutes). Lastly, I used a large 2 inch brush to put down some thinned Elmers glue and then sprinkled flocking over the top in small patches. (8 minutes) I deliberately decided not to flock the entire surface because of the primary users are going to be a pair of 6-year old boys. Flocking and static grass are just going to end up getting all over the carpet ... which I have to clean up.

And here is the finished product with a proud little boy behind it. The test board probaby took 45 minutes of effort. I figure that the remaining 5 boards will probably take maybe 2 hours. I'll report back when those are done.

Notes

Last updated	2/15/09
Author	Michael Kan
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