Zombicide Green Horde Tiles - Part 1

Those are four boards to play Zombicide Green Horde. I played this game a lot, so I thought I should make it even more enjoyable by building some kind of 3D terrain to play one.

I started by ordering 4 MDF planks from my local store. I made them 33x33cm. I chose those dimensions because it means I would be able to fit them in my IKEA kallax shelves, and that would made 3 11x11cm squares per side, which should be wide enough to add details AND contain a horde of minis.

I then cut the foam to shape. In Green Horde, there is some elevation to be taken into account the rules. Some tiles are filled with water, which make moving slower, but could also prevent zombies from getting out of. I decided that anything on the MDF level would be in water, while anything on top of the foam would be at street level.

To further differenciate between street and houses, I added another thing foam layer on the tiles were a house should site. I would be able to carve this in various stone patterns to represent the sidewalks.

Finally, those little plastic things come from a second hand board game. The were the perfect size to glue on the side of the foam to act as stones for the canal.

Here it is, after gluing the dominos and adding the corner tile.

I carved some stone pattern on the sidewalk of this tile. I started with some random rectangles on each side.

Then connected them together with more random lines turning a 90° angle here and there.

And finally connected all the lines together.

I also carved stonework for the street directly into the foam. I textured it with a rock and pressed some "stones" heavily with a spoon to indent them a bit more.

I also started working on the second tile. This one has stairs for zombies and survivors to easily get out of the water. I carved the foam at mid-height to look like a step. Minis are too large to fit on the actual step, but that's no problem as it was just meant to represent an easy way to get from water to dry land for game purposes.

And this is the complete board of 4 tiles I was aiming for, just enough to do the tutorial scenario.

I tried to carved various stone patterns on the house floor, to better differentiate them. In retrospect, this was a lot of work for a barely noticeable effect. The patterns that work the best are the simplest; large stone slabs and no intricate details.

This tile was only streets and houses. I made the sidewalk of the center top part overflow on the adjacent tiles, to better tie them together. It looks very nice on this tile but this unfortunately prevent this board from aligning correctly with the other boards as this center top part is now larger. I didn't think of that at that time.

On the original tile, the large house is split in three rooms, so I kept this layout in the foam.

On the canal board, I started applying some texture to the ground tiles. I mixed sand, small stones, wood glue, brown paint and water and applied that.

You can also see wooden planks separating the tiles. It's because on the original board, there are hedges at those junctions. Hedges in Green Horde block line of sight, but you can still go through. My plan was to craft hedges as well (this will come in another post), but to keep the board playable without the additional hedges. So I needed a way to "mark" on the board where the edges should be. I wasn't really sure how to represent that, so I used some wooden planks. Not the best choice, but it was all I could think of.

Thanks to the initial 33x33cm dimensions I took, I was able to store them in my shelf by stacking them when not working on them.

The street board. I tried to kinda replicate the initial drawings on the initial board for the long house but if I had to redo it, I wouldn't bother and would go with a simpler pattern.

I like how the street stones are looking though. I carved the foam in parallel lines, then draw perpendicular ones to form the bricks. I applied stone texture with a rock, and then pressed individual stones. Sometimes the whole stone, sometimes only part of it.

All the boards together after a first coat of paint. You can see that I added some debris in the water, to subtly mark where one tile ends and where another starts, because it will have an impact on the game.

Now comes time for drybrushing. I did a gray one on the street, followed by some brown and green ones here and there. I'm not entirely convinced by the overall effect, to be honest.

After a dark wash, it looks already much better.

And another group shot, partly painted.

I applied a strong dark wash on the four stone floors here. I spent some time trying to carve symbols on the floor. I should have stayed with simpler patterns (I know I've been saying that a lot already, but I really should have).

More WIP shots.

Now it was time to make this canal look more like water. I applied some translucent wood varnish on it an stippled my brush to make it look like small waves.

The effect was nice, and I let it dry overnight.

Once dry, well, it shrank a lot. All the "waves" became flat, and all the flat surfaces became dry.

Closer shot so you can appreciate the effect.

So I applied a second layer.

This time, I was more heavy handed. Knowing that most of it will just dry and evaporate, I added a fair amount (keeping the wavy effect).

And for sure, the final effect was much more convincing.