Terror on the Moscow Road - Making the Board

I've done some more work on my Russian Retreat horror game. I just wanted to note how I constructed the winter boards.

I used beaded styrofoam insullation panels. The hills were simply pieces of scrap styrofoam that I carved up.

The river and the road were carved into the boards using a heated styrofoam cutter. I made the ice covering using blank sheets of Shrinky-Dink materials. In case you don't know, these are craft kits that allow kids to draw and color images on an opaque sheet, cut the image out, and then place them in the oven to heat. This causes them to shrink down but the image and colors become more intense. The sheets are nicely opaque so made for excellent ice. I didn't heat them, just cut them to match the river bed. I then built up the river banks to cover the edges using Scenic Express PlasterWrap.

After carving the features into the boards, I painted them with some cheap craft paint. I first put down a coat of light blue, followed by a coat of white. I added a second coat of white and then sprinkled everything with snow flocking. The road was painted a muddy brown. The river bed, under the Shrinky-Dink ice, was painted a dark green.

The road appeared somewhat over-sized since I wanted to create a sort of sea of mud impression as if a large number of people and vehicles churned up the area.

I then added winter trees from various train or Christmas decorations sets, most of them gotten fairly cheap at after Christmas sales.

There was one thing that I noticed when I was painting the figures up. One of my favorite movies is "The Duelists" and the brief portion of the movie that takes place during the retreat from Moscow is one of the most memorable. There were a couple of figures that I think resemble the main characters. They are probably going to show up as characters in the game.

"Pistols next time."