For my Darkest Africa campaign I need some kind of modular river for wargaming. Especially for games like Pulp Alley a river offers some nice gameplay options. Bridges, crocodiles and shallow water also add some kind of fluff to the game. And you can’t have too much scenery in our hobby. So maybe you would like to check out our jungle tree tutorial as well.
In the first step I cut the foam core into pieces. Having a clear idea how big the complete river should be is very important at this point. Because of that I numbered every singled element.
In the second step I cut some foam board into shape and glued it to the base. I used my glue gun for that, but PVA will work too. After that I used filler to give the pieces more structure.
After the filler dried completely, it was time for some painting. I mixed blue and green, using acrylic house paints from the home improvement store. Quiet honestly in retrospect I will not use the color again. The result is ok, but it looks quiet artificial. I would advise to paint the river in two or three different color to add some more variety.
Finishing the piece
After the paint dried, I hot glued some rocks the the pieces. I also used the hot gun to add some river current effect to the pieces. In a second step I used watered-down white acrylic paint to add some color to the glue. Here more is less, so I advice not to use to much paint and no paint thinner at all! Finally I added some details like plants, bushes etc. to the pieces.
