Making the terrain boards for 'Carry On up the Nile!' (2)

The next stage was to paint the edges of the boards. (This was not strictly necessary, but I think that it looks neater.) To do this, I used the same Yellow Ochre acrylic paint that I intended to use to represent the desert parts of my completed terrain boards.

I then marked the outline of the River Nile on each board. I based the outline on a map I found of the area around Khartoum at the time of the siege.

I divided the map into a 6 x 8 grid, with each grid square representing a 6-inch square on my terrain boards. (The darker lines in the grid show where the edge of each terrain board would be.)

I tried to represent the main features shown on the map, but widened the River Nile in places to allow the model ships of the Second Relief Force to move along it without looking too ridiculously big in comparison.

Once the outline of the River Nile had been marked on the terrain boards using a soft pencil, I painted in the river using two coats of Cerulean Blue acrylic paint. I was not too worried if the paint strayed outside the lines I had drawn on, as the banks of the River Nile were going to be painted in afterwards.

Once the paint was dry, I then began the more detailed painting of the river banks, using the Yellow Ochre-coloured acrylic paint I had used on the edges of each terrain board. Once that was done, I then filled in the unpainted desert areas on the terrain boards. I used two coats to ensure the best coverage that I could, and the end results looked like this:

Although they are not perfect (there are some gaps between the boards and a certain amount of warping has take place), I think that they are more than adequate for the task. Now all I have to do is to build Khartoum and its defences.