Making Ponds & Swamps

Making ponds and swamps are a really nice feature to add to your wargames table. And of course they can also represent natural barriers which either can be crossed or avoided.

Ponds can be easily made with the following materials hardboard or MDF using various fillers, brown acrylic mastic. And of course it's not only ponds that can be made with these materials, canals, stagnant swamps, waterfalls, rivers.

Making A Pond With Hardboard And Polycell Fillers 

1. Build the base in the same way as you would a river section however I would suggest making it an irregular shape and build up the sides in exactly the same way as you would for a river. You can add small islands in the pond at this stage. 

2. I then cut thin slivers of foam board to allow me to make the banks of the pond. I then glued the foam board to the edges of the board with PVA glue.

4. The next stage was to texture the edges with Polycell Textured Ceilings Course Effect. 

5. Once the Polycell Textured Ceilings Course Effect and the Polycell Filler had completely dried I then used small pieces of doormat and stuck these using a glue gun to the sides of the pond to simulate reads etc. 

6. I then painted the entire board in Humbrol No. 110 Natural Wood including the bottom of the pond. 

7. Pour liberal amounts of varnish into your finished pond and allow to dry this may take a while. 

9. The next step is to varnish the edges of your pond using Ronseal Diamond Hard Varnish, matt clear once this is dry you can then add Noch Summer Meadow Grass. 

Making A Pond With Brown Acrylic Mastic

1. First of all you need some backing material, I used an old bedsheet cut into irregular shapes. 

2. Secondly you need brown acrylic mastic which can be bought from any DIY store, B&Q, Homebase, etc that you have to be really careful here and make sure you get the right one it must say paintable.

3. You are now ready to apply your mastic to your backing, put a thin layer on your backing material and carefully smooth it out. Once you have done this you then need to make your pond edges, you do this by putting more mastic on the edges and carefully building it up until you are happy.

4. Allow the mastic to settle down for half an hour or so before you attempt to add any details.

5. Once the mastic has fully dried I then paint it all with Humbrol No. 110 Natural Wood including the bottom of the pond once dry. I then dry brushed the edges of the pond with Humbrol No. 103 Cream. 

9. The next step is to add Noch Summer Meadow Grass. 

Making A Swamp

A stagnant swamp can be made with either of the above two methods however make sure that you make the water look extremely murky and dirty. 

Tools

Pencil

Tape measure

Wood saw

Rasp

Paintbrushes

Craft knife

Scissors 

Ruler 

Glue gun

Materials

Hardboard

Polycell Textured Ceilings Course Effect

Ronseal Diamond Hard Varnish, matt clear

Noch Summer Meadow Grass

Bedsheet

Brown Acrylic Mastic 

Humbrol Colours

Humbrol No. 110 Natural Wood

Humbrol No. 103 Cream