Making the terrain boards for 'Carry On up the Nile!' (1)

Having decided to run a session at COW2019 to showcase Chris Engle's POLITICS BY OTHER MEANS, I decided to get everything ready well in advance. The scenario was simple; it was a follow-on from last year's Matrix Game of SAVE GORDON! Writing the character sheets (which tell the players a little about the person they represent in the game and laying down some simple behavioural goals they need to maintain) was a relatively simple and quick task, as was sorting out the figures I was going to use. This left one task ... preparing the terrain, which needed to be as light as possible.

I originally envisaged either using a printed terrain map as I had for the COW2018 session, but I felt that this would not look right and that players deserved something a little more three dimensional. I then tried using my Hexon II terrain tiles, and whilst I could produce a satisfactory 3D representation of the terrain, I was worried that players might not realise that the hexes had nothing to do with the rules they were using.

I pondered what to do ... and during a visit to a branch of THE WORKS – a discount book and craft store – I saw some large, cheap painter's canvases on sale. I bought four, and set about turning them into terrain boards. To do this I required:

• Four large (18-inch x 24-inch) painter's canvases, which gave me a total area of 36-inches/3’ x 48-inches/4’
• Some cheap PVA glue (bought from a branch of POUNDLAND)
• Some A4-sized sheets of foamcore board (which I already had to hand)
• Some cheap acrylic paint (bought from THE WORKS and another discount store)
• A large (1-inch) paint brush

I used the sheets of foamcore to reinforce the back surface of each canvas, and some foamcore off-cuts to provide some rigidity in the centre of each canvas.

I then ‘primed’ each canvas with two coats of PVA to seal the surface and to tighten them. (The water in the PVA causes the cotton to shrink very slightly, which helps to make the surface a little more rigid.)