Cavernous Terrain

[Rat13]

Recently Black Magic Craft on YouTube made some Underdark terrain using foamcore. I thought it was a very neat idea but I honestly didn't expect to ever make any, I guess my wife had other ideas though. 

 

This year she made goodie bags for the trick or treaters but since neither one of us would be home to actually give out the candy she made a sign with the typical "happy Halloween please take one" instructions. To my surprise this actually worked very well, though admittedly I'm not sure if that's because kids are better than when I was young or the low number of trick or treaters we get. As we were cleaning up that's when I noticed that she had made her sign out of dollar store foamcore. Apparently that's just the coincidental push I needed to make some cavernous scatter terrain of my own. 

 

I'd reccomend watching Black Magic Craft's actual build first as it's a great video. Plus I really only intend to give an overview of the build and the mistakes I made trying to replicate his pieces rather than the actual steps.

 

After cutting and hot gluing all the pieces together I was feeling pretty confident, they didn't look too bad either.

 

Unfortunately I left a ton of brushstrokes on the pieces when I sealed them.

 

Everything looked a bit better after I applied some brown paint however.

 

My wash was just too strong though and I basically brought everything back to the orginal black.

 

So I once again painted them brown.

 

I thinned down my wash and also used less of it which worked pretty well. I drybrushed everything with a lighter brown and they look pretty good. I can definitely still see a ton of brushstrokes on the pieces but they almost work in their favor, adding a bit of texture to everything.

 

I definitely made some mistakes on this project but I'm really glad I gave it a try. My pieces aren't as nice and polished as a Pro builder but I certainly think they're passable. Plus once you add miniatures they look way better.

[ced1106]

Good for her! 

 

So how do you keep track of a model's elevation on a hill? I see you have a flat top. Maybe use a thumbtack on the side of the hill as a Q&D elevation or positional marker. 

[Rat13]

4 hours ago, ced1106 said:

So how do you keep track of a model's elevation on a hill? I see you have a flat top. Maybe use a thumbtack on the side of the hill as a Q&D elevation or positional marker. 

I simply posed figures with the terrain for a picture, I haven't used any of these for D&D or wargaming yet. For use in a game however I'd simply use the wobbly model syndrome from wargaming (whenever a model cannot fully stand without falling over simply place a die or marker where the model should be). You could also use the climbing system Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago, if a model is climbing up a piece of terrain but cannot reach the top with their available movement simply place a die that indicates just how far up they are in inches. In most cases you'll never need a die larger than a D12. At least that's what I would do.

[DanH]

Well, you're doomed now, pretty soon you'll have terrain and scatter pieces everywhere.

You will be acquiring more shelving before you know it! :D

[Rat13]

On 11/23/2020 at 10:36 PM, DanH said:

Well, you're doomed now, pretty soon you'll have terrain and scatter pieces everywhere.

You will be acquiring more shelving before you know it! :D

Hate to say it but I'm almost there already. The small space I've been storing things is already full and the overflow is taking up space on my supply shelf.

[Chaoswolf]

Good work!

[Froggy the Great]

I like this a lot and am considering similar.  I'm not even disappointed that the title is "Cavernous" terrain and not "Carnivorous" as I first read it.

 

How are you dealing with the material's propensity to warp?

[Rat13]

On 12/29/2020 at 1:43 PM, Froggy the Great said:

How are you dealing with the material's propensity to warp?

Usually a coating of Modge Podge mixed with paint is used and that's enough to deal with warping. This project however uses caulk mixed with paint. Of the two I think I prefer the Modge Podge mix as it doesn't have to be used immediately so you can get away with making it in advance.