We have made a couple of realistic and useful pieces of Terrain for Frostgrave, Dungeons and Dragons and the like. It’s time for some mountains! This is aimed at War gaming mainly as it makes use of two flat surfaces for placing miniatures on and gives some great line of sight opportunities during play.
Materials Required
- Double Corrugated Cardboard or Foamboard
- Craft Foam or Polystyrene
- Filler and sand.
- Black, grey, light grey, very light grey and brown acrylic paint.
- PVA Glue
- Green Flock
- Cast Rocks or Carved Foam Rocks (optional).
Preparing The General Base and Structure
The first step is to prepare the main base and structure. First we want to start off by cutting a large cuboid out of polystyrene or craft farm, roughly 5 inches by 9 inches. Then chamfer all the corners and with a slightly longer blade make vertical cuts into the side of the foam and twist the knife to pull out chunks from the foam. Glue this starting shape down onto a piece of foam board or double corrugated cardboard. At this stage you can attach any separate pieces of foam rocks or casted plaster rocks to the sides.
Next cut out a taller L shaped section from foam, like the picture below and then glue it on top of the existing cuboid. Make sure to position it to one edge so that the edge is flush, this helps with line of sight, but making it impossible for a miniature to move all the way round the mountain.
Finally add in a slope of either cardboard or foamboard and blend all of the stones/rocks with a mixture of sand, pva glue and filler. It should look something like the below. On the slope, attach squares of foam that have an angle cut out of them to sit on the slope, this creates a nice set of steps leading up to the top section. Try and make these steps large enough so that a mini can stand on it.
Lets Paint This Mountain!
The next step is to paint the mountain, I painted the whole thing with a slightly watered down black so that it would get into all of the cracks, make sure you don’t spray it as it will melt the foam.
Next I painted it grey and when it was dry I dry brushed it with a lighter grey. When that was dry I did a final dry brush of light grey to really help the edges of the rocks pop. I then painted the flat surfaces with a dark brown, ready for flocking.
The Finishing Details
As a last step I added some flocking to the parts of the mountain I had painted brown and I added some flower tufts I purchased on eBay. I took some green sponge and foliage I had lying around and glued that on aswell, this helps make the piece feel more alive. I then cut out the whole thing from the base and painted the edges with a black.
I hope you enjoyed this quick craft guide, sorry there isn’t many photos I forgot to take some during the steps, i’ll remember to take more next time around!