March Terrain

Also got a bunch done on a terrain piece I've been working on for the past couple of months. It's a scratch build; not that complicated but pretty big for an individual terrain piece. In fact, I'm not really sure whether to classify it as a terrain piece or a game board! I plan on using it more as the latter.

In January I bought a cool tool that I had read about on other blogs called a Proxxon Thermocut wire cutter. It is like a standard hot wire cutter for foam, but in the form of a "table saw" rather than a hand held tool.

http://www.amazon.com/Proxxon-37080-Wire-Cutter-THERMOCUT/dp/B0017NS8H6

Of course I had to test it when I got it... it's funny what will inspire you to work on something. Although I've got a few dozen ideas in my head at any one time of projects I'd "like" to do, this one came about from buying the Proxxon Thermocut and having tons of foam and a piece of 30" square mdf laying around!

I bought some 1x6 wood for the walls, used the mdf as the floor, and started slicing up foam to come up with this:

My Possessed warband for Mordheim served as models to show the scale. The raised terrace, stairs, and columns are all cut from foam and covered in Foam Coat (exterior) from Hot Wire Foam Factory.

The flooring is textured wallpaper. This was quite an adventure in and of itself... I couldn't decide on a pattern for the flooring but I knew I didn't just want to leave it plain. I ended up buying several different rolls of textured wallpaper before settling on this one. Now I have lots for future projects!

It's looking OK so far but I wish I would have figured out a way to add some more detail to the build. I got lazy with the columns and only did one level of relief on them, I could have added more. Not sure what else though. I'm happy I added the molding to the tops of the walls. Didn't want to add piles of bones and debris because I want it to be a more generic piece that can be used for multiple settings.

I have to build an entrance way for the front hall, but I wanted it to be removable so I'll do it separately.

The idea of this board is that it's loosely based on this one, which is itself loosely based on the Balin's Tomb scene from the Fellowship of the Ring.

http://thomarillion.de/index.php?seite=katalog&sprache=gb_&modell=dunklesreich&pos=2

Mine is bigger though! And instead of spending all that money on the Thomarillion one I got the Proxxon instead, which I can use on other projects. I did order from Thomarillion anyway and used the money I "saved" to buy other stuff hehe.

My plan is to use this for at least a few different things. I want to use the tomb and well from the Games Workshop Mines of Moria boxed set to fill it out as Balin's Tomb. I'm going to build a bunch of book shelves and use them for this to represent the Library scenario in the main Frostgrave rulebook, and thought it could also be used for the Ghoul King's lair/throne room in the Thaw of the Lich Lord book. I've also been thinking of making up some modular 3D Dungeon boards for dungeon crawls... if I do, I can add this as a large room to add on to those.

I took a bunch of work in progress shots, which is something I normally forget to do!