The Westfold was the western part of Rohan, close to the White Mountains and lying between the river Isen and the Folde. The North-South Road ran through the Westfold from the Fords of Isen to Edoras. Its strongpoint was Helm’s Deep.
- J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), Unfinished Tales, “The West of Middle-earth at the End of the Third Age”
Finishing this gaming board was quite a task actually, as it was meant to be a club project. But working on it together proofed to be more difficult than expected. It’s always hard to find an appointed day and if so most of us prefered to roll the dice instead. So my regards go out to my club mates Flattervieh (who invested most of the necessary workload) and Rekrom who both helped to get the board finished. But now let us start from the very first steps.
We’re huge fans of the Citadel Realm of Battle Board. Yet there are some minor changes which seem to be necessary when you get one of them for an atmospheric LotR board.
Lots of skulls may be a good idea if you want to set up a war-torn world where demons walk the earth but certainly not for a LotR table.
So we scratched every skull from the surface and filled every bone loaded hole with milliput plaster.
Here comes the white glue!
All tiles got their fair share of sand and little rocks to give the board a more realistic look.
After a spray priming (not pictured) there came a layer of dark brown acrylic paint as a primer.
Four layers later. The base colour got lightened up and the drybrushing popped out the details.
Fifty shades of green….nah…only 3. “Will it blend? That is the question.”
And that’s what the green flock did indeed. It was much to chunky and was in dire need of a blending to get it into smaller pieces.
White glue time again! Together with the different flock colours we added little grass bunches in two different colours.
And that’s what we basically did (well on four of the six board tiles only, as I think we won’t need the other two so very soon).
An Uruk-Hai was kind enough to pose as a reference on the detail shots.
Not quite the guest who is welcome in the Westfold.
Of course you can find the Simbelmynë flowers here and there on the board tiles.
The Uruk-Hai enjoys the walk on his new playground.
I couldn’t resist and had to pose with the whole new bunch of miniatures on the new board.
And since we all know that you need fitting terrain aswell, here’s a little preview of the things to come. Let’s just hope it won’t take long until you can read about the Westfold here again.