Painting our dungeon board in HeroQuest style

A friendly, practical beginner's guide

If you want to paint your modular dungeon board in the classic HeroQuest style, there are many ways to achieve your goal. The most important factors are the result you want to achieve and how much time you're willing to invest. This guide shows you a proven method that will get you a coherent, playable result relatively quickly, without days of meticulous detail work.

Basically, we work with a combination of dry brushing and speed painting (slap-chop technique). This technique is particularly well suited for large areas such as dungeon floors, walls, and corridors.

Note: You can find countless good explanatory videos on YouTube for all the techniques mentioned – whether you are a beginner or advanced user.

Step 1: Priming – the basis for everything

First, the entire dungeon board is primed black. This is extremely important, as the black indentations will later provide depth and contrast, and the primer ensures that the paint will adhere well later.

You can use high-quality miniature sprays (e.g., from Army Painter or Citadel). However, for the amount of paint needed for a dungeon board, black car paint works very well too.

Important:

• Spray only outdoors or with sufficient exhaust or fresh air supply.
• Minimum 15°C, dry, calm
• Respiratory protection and gloves are highly recommended.
• Then let the board air out for 1-2 days so that the varnish hardens completely and any odors dissipate.
• Please observe general warnings

For a complete board with walls, you should plan on using approximately 2-4 spray cans.

Step 2: Dry brushing – the 3D effect is emphasized

After drying comes one of the most important steps: dry brushing with white acrylic paint.

A large, soft brush (e.g., a makeup brush) is almost completely cleaned of paint and then lightly brushed over all raised areas. The result:

• Edges and details become bright
• Recesses remain dark
• The dungeon immediately appears three-dimensional and "alive".

Without this step, the board often looks flat and boring later on, so don't skip it 😉

Based on experience, you will need 2-3 bottles of white acrylic paint from the miniatures sector (e.g. Army Painter Matt White or similar) for an entire board.

Step 3: Colors with speedpaints (slap-chop)

Now color comes into play. Speedpaints are very thin and automatically flow into grooves, joints and recesses – perfect for dungeon floors and walls.

Here's how to proceed:

• Apply color sparingly, do not "flood" it.
• Avoid excess paint (avoid pooling)
• It's better to work cleanly and in a controlled manner.
• For darker areas, you can simply do a second pass after drying.

In our case, the following occurred:

• Painted room surfaces
• The passages were deliberately left neutral.
• Only drains and details in the corridors are colored.

This adds variety and improves readability on the game table. The same technique works for walls and doors.

For furniture or small details, you can optionally use regular acrylic paints to add highlights and accents. However, this is not mandatory and can be done later at any time.

Step 4: Protective varnish – highly recommended

Since a dungeon board is constantly being handled, moved and played with, a protective varnish is extremely important .

• It protects against abrasion.
• significantly extends the lifespan of the colors

We recommend a satin varnish :

• not completely matte
• not very glossy
• very pleasing to the eye

Simply spray evenly after the paint has completely dried and then allow the board to dry for at least 24 hours .

Ideally, the board should be left to air out for 1-2 days in a well-ventilated place (e.g., in the garage).

Even after applying the protective varnish, you can continue painting or improving details at any time; that's absolutely no problem.

Finally, one more important point:

The manufacturers and products mentioned here are exactly the ones we've used ourselves . They are not a requirement for success, nor should they be considered advertising. We don't earn anything extra from them and have no partnerships. They are simply meant to serve as a guide and aid. You are, of course, free to use other brands, colors, or techniques; the result is what matters.

By the way, we did all painting steps with the board fully assembled. The paint does not need to cover every side or the underside. Because of the frame parts, you just need to make sure that no unpainted areas are visible through gaps or edges.

Our final tip:

👉 Just start and don't be afraid.

If you have a test part, use it to try things out. Practice will come naturally.

Have fun painting your dungeon board! 🖌️🏰