Materials:
4 4'x2'x1/2' MDF sheets
3 Cans of Flat Black Primer
1 Can of Matte Varnish
A Tube of White Acrylic Paint
A Few New Toothbrushes
The MDF sheets are well suited for this project for a variety of reasons. Firstly, they hold very straight whatever the moisture because of their lack of a grain. I'm not a particularly skilled at working wood, and nothing annoys me more than a warped board. Secondly, the lack of a grain ensures they have a very smooth surface that we were able to paint directly onto. And lastly, they're cheap!
We chose to use four 2x4's instead of a single 4x8 for ease of storage. A drawback of this is that the seam of our boards doesn't always meet up completely evenly, but finding room for a 4x8 in either of our houses would have been just too hard.
Process:
1. Sand down any rough edges on the MDF sheets.
2. Spray paint the boards black (we did just one side for now)
3. Using the toothbrush, "flick" specks of white paint all over the boards. Make sure to practice on another surface to get the technique down before you apply it to the boards.
4. Seal the board using the matte varnish. Don't hesitate to leave it a bit thicker in some places than others. This will create an effect, which is discussed further below.
All told the project cost around $40 dollars, and took perhaps 2 hours including driving and eating Wasabi Doritos. We found the effect satisfactory for the effort, but make your own judgement:
They're certainly better than a regular table surface, but our friends commented that they would have liked to see some more blue. When in play there will certainly be some anomolie markers for the game present, but this is still a valid criticism. Perhaps later we will paint the other side of the boards with a few blue specks as well as white. Heck, I might even break out my airbrush to paint some distant space anomalies. At any rate, this achieves that sort of "deep space" look and will do quite beautifully for out first games.
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