Temperategrave - Terrain

[Dogma2097]

After picking up Frostgrave, and having a few games with existing scenery, I decided I needed to, at least, have one modular tile with the ancient ruined city feel. I have a few plain 2x2 grass boards that can pass muster, and wanted to also attempt it on the cheap. Cheap is good.

Ruined crossroads board -
18" x 24" Pre-stretched canvas - £1.99
A1 foamboard - £5
All purpose filler (for texture) - £1
2 x tester paint pots for base colours - £2

All other stuff I had in my wargaming pantry - additional paints, plasticard, sand, static grass, glue and stuff. I decided to use the canvas for the frame as it was only £2 and my usual attempts at woodwork are generally a bit shabby, and I'll always take the chance of experimenting when it's only a couple of quid. Simply set up the canvas, trimmed foamboard to size, glued and pinned foamboard down to canvas frame and then proceeeded to texturise it with anything I could lay my hands on. As it turned out not bad I may extend the board this way from now on...

The other stuff - statue, crystal growths and scaffolding came to a mammoth £5 altogether (leftover foamboard for the most part, and otherwise "poundshop specials") - the scaffolding is about 35p worth of B&Q dowelling with 50p worth of lollipop sticks stuck on, and I have enough of that stuff left to do at least another couple of these - great to add mutiple levels.

Anyway, the crystals are a nod to an ice spell having gone wrong, and am going for a more moorland feel for the bulk of it - honestly just don't have the space for dedicated theme boards (also to try and keep the bulk of the terrain fairly scale agnostic - not gonna get away with that when it comes to buildings!)

Gonna start some specific Frostgrave buildings next week (bored of using 40K and generic fantasy stuff), but not sure exactly what style I'm gonna do... quite fancy a magic using high tech feel - William Gibson meets Tolkien. Something that really makes it feel alien to the medieval era warriors we have wandering about... (not sure that'll fit with the cobblestones on the board though :-D)

[mweaver]

That looks very striking, Dogma.  It really captures the overgrown ruined city vibe.

-Michael

[Harry]

Very nice.
Needs more snow.

[Drachenklinge]

I am intrigued by the statue ... mind a how-to?

[Helznicht]

I love the look.  To be honest, I am not a fan of snow, it really limits what you can use the terrain for.

To your scenery, I like the street, but fair warning, I built a modular board with streets and ruined buildings for Mordheim many years ago.  Although it looked the part, the streets add a lot of open terrain that makes ranged shooters just deadly, even in Mordheim.  Frostgrave crossbowman are even deadlier.  If you are set on streets, they need to be more of the alley-way type between buildings.  Ultimately I ended up dropping the streets and made more buildings and just scattered them for Mordeim.  Before you get too far in creating all the modular roads, you might want to do some play testing.

[Dogma2097]

Thanks for the feedback all.

The reason I've gone for the overgrowth is just to "hint" at the street stuff - plenty of scatter terrain to be put on top (those rock pillars, bushes, trees and stuff) is gonna take care of the open ground aspect - just having the hints of roads there gives me a sense that it's in an ancient city though when playing.

The statue was simply a cheap Wilko plastic toy, glued to one of those cheap paper mache craft boxes you find at most arty stores for the base. Scored some brickwork/detail into the base and coated in thinned polyfilla style spackle, smoothed down and then added some extra details before painting. Tried to weather the PVC figure with various implements, and had the best effect with a sharp bit of slate. All just spray coated then painted.

Rose granite - Used a toothbrush spray effect to build up layers of varying colours, using sponge to dapple anything that looked too unnatural. Khaki basecoat, Terracotta for the "rose", cold grey for the darker and a light Bone for interest. Picked the wrong shade for the cavity wash...

Bronze - Basecoat 50/50 Vallejo Bronze/Black
Highlight Vallejo Bronze
Wash 40/40/20 GW Ice Blue/Hawk Turqouise/Vallejo Cold Grey
Detail wash same with added white.
Final highlight/overbrush with Bronze.

[Harry]

OK ... I liked the statue before ... now I love it.
Always makes me smile when someone can put something like that on the gaming table for peanuts, Brilliant.

[von Lucky]

Very nice stuff. And yes, cheap is good!

[Drachenklinge]

Thanks a lot for the how-to!
So You actually start with the bronze. Sort of like in real. Amazing. Thanks again. Will try this colour combo mysellf.

[wulfgar22]

Brilliant!