One of the primary requirements was that it would be reasonably easy to transport several of our tourmament tables at once. In order to achieve this we built the basic structure of the tables from 5mm thick wood panels and lengths of wood as a border. The table measures 1m20 by 90cm.
These lengths of wood are 3.2cm high, so in order to be able to stack these tables without damaging anything we would make no fixed scenery higher than 3cm on the tables.
The borders pieces were attached to the wood panels using wood glue and screws.

Here is the finished and mounted frame.
We have directly drawn on the panel the scenery elements that we wanted to place on the table.
The principle of this table was to have a canyon like form, with different levels descending towards the central plain where the Jin Posts are located.
The scenery for the Jin Posts are for the moment identified as large boulders ("gros cailloux" in french).

Since the lengths of wood allowing us to stack the tables are 3.2cm high, we bought 3cm Styrofoam panels to build up the walls of the canyon.
We simply drew the approximate shapes that we wanted to cut on the Styrofoam with a marker and cut these pieces with the terrain builder’s best friend - the hot wire foam cutter*.

Here are the three levels of the canyon cut sequentially from the same Styrofoam panel, and close to them the hot wire foam cutter* we used.
You can see how these three elements perfectly fit each other, since they were cut from the same panel.

The three pieces were cut again to have variations in height.
The surface of the levels are intentionally erratic in order to give the levels a natural and irregular aspect.
You can also see that some parts were cut beforehand, because they were too large to fit into the frame of the hot wire foam cutter*.

We repeated this operation for the other sides of the table and glued down the pieces of Styrofoam using wood glue.
The three central pieces of scenery were made using roughly cut pieces of Styrofoam glued as shown.

After the glue had completely dried, we smoothed a few parts of each level with sandpaper.  The last step is to pass the flame of a welding torch* over some parts of the table.
The welding torch* will make the Styrofoam compact itself, and add texture and rigidity.
You can use the tip of a pen to draw some cracks directly into the Styrofoam. This will have a very good effect when you paint the table.

In order to finalize the rough aspect of the Canyon, we used wood Polyfilla diluted with water in some places - primarily the plain of the table and the places were the levels change).
Wood Polyfilla is an extremely useful material, but it is very important not to mistake it for normal Polyfilla - wood Polyfilla has a rough texture, where the normal normal is used for smoothing.

The paintjob was done very economically, using large pots of paint you can find in any hardware store.
First a complete undercoat of diluted red was applied.  It was partially absorbed by the Styrofoam and flowed into the little cracks we carved earlier, immediately giving an effect of depth.
The forward areas were highlighted with yellow; blending the transitions while the red paint was still wet.
The darkest areas were painted with diluted green. As green is the chromatic opposite of red, it added some depth and colour-related richness to the table.
In all the stages, the paint was diluted to allow smooth transitions and no brush strokes.
The last step (not displayed in this picture) was to paint the sides of the table black.