Revisiting Middle Earth: Armies on Parade 2018

In one of my crazier plans I decided that having started painting my Army of the Dead on the 6th October it would be totally possible to get them ready for Armies on Parade on the 13th. It turns out it definitely was possible, but I had to cut a lot of corners putting the board together so whilst it made it to the event it's unlikely to ever be used again. Still, I was very pleased I put the effort in as it gave me a real boost to have something to take to the store as tangible proof that I was actually enjoying my hobby again.

The board was constructed on a 2x2 sheet of MDF that I had in storage (as you do) with a 1x1 removable back corner piece designed to be removed and stored in my display cabinet after the event. I knew that the board as a whole was unlikely to be kept so I thought it would be nice to keep a piece as a display for my Army and I'm pleased to say this worked very well.
The board was roughed out with cheap polystyrene hacked into shape with a craft knife and then covered in polyfiller. Because I only had 2 evenings to build this beast I gave it a couple of hours to start drying and then used PVA to fix down some rocks / bigger scatter and then covered the whole thing in a good layer of brown & black poster paints mixed with pva and kiln dried sand to give it some texture then left it overnight to dry.

The next day it was mostly dry so I painted the rocks grey before I went to work and then gave the whole thing a good drybrushing with a light brown paint for the soil / light grey for the rocks when I got home. After dinner I applied liberal amounts of static grass (Army Painter Steppe Grass) and chiselled out some space at the front to add a nice quote from the Lord of the Rings books to give it some context.