Making a Kings of War Display Board

So, I've spent the last two weeks building a display board for my Kings of War Lizardman army. It was a bigger project than I anticipated!

I started with an Ikea serving tray. This would serve as the foundation for the display board. I picked the Ikea tray because it had a nice wood finish, and carrying handles...very handy for moving an army around during a tournament! I also picked up a big piece of cork bark from the local pet store. After cutting up the cork, it was time to build an arrangement.

I wanted to use the cork bark as a mountainous backdrop for the display board. After settling on the general look of the backdrop, I glued all the major pieces into place.

I knew I'd be doing a lot of spray painting and glueing on the board, and I didn't want to ruin the tray's wooden finish. So, painters tape went on every exposed wooden surface.

The mountains were backed with pink foam board, and the gaps were filled with plaster.

Next, the cork bark mountains were supplemented with extra decorative rock and cork ballast. Then, the mountains and backing were spray painted. I used an acrylic black primer to ensure that the foam did not dissolve! The mountains were then sprayed with a succession of grey tones and coloured inks. The whole range was then drybrushed to finish off the rocky look.

I placed a natural cave entrance in the middle of the backdrop, which I wanted to frame with a pre-historic post-and-lintel entranceway. This was made from pink foam and plaster.

The post-and-lintel was going to be adorned with Lizardman glyphs. These are metal GW pieces saved in a box for many years! Sprayed gold and washed orange.

The glyphs were then glued on to the stone portal.

This small structure was then glued down to the board, and I started the process of laying down thinned white glue and sand to texture up the main part of the display board.

The groundwork was then primed black and sprayed a few shades of brown. I then spent some time drybrushing with orange-brown.

Next came an overall drybrush of off-white, followed by the application of random patches of white glue and static grass. The tape was removed (this was actually a time-consuming, horrible job...the tape was inadvertently glued down to the board)!

And there you have it...a display board for the Lizardmen!

Thematic, easy to carry around on tournament day, and not half-bad-looking to boot.

Up next: more Lizardmen, of course!

'Til next time.