Terrainfest 2025 - Crusading in the Trenches

Now that my baseboards were assembled, it was time to lay up the polystyrene and draw out my trenches. Firstly i cut down my sheet to size, then hit the drawing board. I re-watched the video from Eric’s hobby shop, as i wanted a similar layout to the one he had done, and i then drew up a couple of maps, even trying Excel to get a better sense of scale which i couldn’t achieve with pen and paper.

I was thinking of drawing more, but to be honest, there’s only so many ways you can draw zig-zags on a rectangle.

Once i was happy with the map i drew on excel, it was time to actually draw them out. I started with what will be the lower lying trench. I wanted them to be wider than trenches might normally be, which would allow for better gameplay, so decided about 2 inches was about right, it would give enough room for 2 infantry minis to go side by side, or one large best or weapons team. So i found a block of wood that was roughly the size i wanted, stuck my pens to it and drew out the trenches.

After drawing the lines, i made some edits with a red pen until i was happy, then it was time to cut, which was done with a combination of hot wire cutter and knife.

Once the trenches were cut, it was time to stick the parts down, which i did with some construction adhesive, then laid one of the plain baseboards on top to weight it down whilst it dried.

With the opposing trenches, I liked the idea of having a more fortified, built up position set into some hills. Whilst the other board dried, i worked on this idea and eventually built up the opposing trenches.

The final bit of this step was to add some more details. I had forgotten to add firing steps to the trenches, so that was the first thing i did. After that it was craters and I also wanted a couple of bunkers in the fortified position so the cut outs for those were added as well.

And there we are, the trenches are beginning to take shape! The only thing i did after this photo was attack the board with a heat gun to give it some texture rather than smooth polystyrene, didnt bother with a photo as it wasnt really visible in the camera…but i promise its there!

This weekend I’m hoping i have time to do some gap filling and some extra detailing, before getting some paint on the board. After that it will be over to doing the detailing that will make them actually look like trenches, rather than holes cut in polystyrene!