Frostgrave Scenery Project 01

As I stated in my last post, over the next couple of months I am going to be building up a series of terrain pieces to use in our Frostgrave campaign.  I started by going through the rulebook and listing all the specific piece that are used in the scenarios, which are as follows:-

Square Mausoleum Building, 6" per side with a door in each wall.

Ruined Wizards Tower - at least 10" high with three floors. This tower must have a building either side of it with a bridge or ladder allowing access to the upper storeys.

Underground Library- The table must be covered in multiple decaying book shelves and rubble. There should be a door or entrance point on each of the four sides of the table.

6 Statues in a 12" square ruin.

Haunted Houses - Six small stone monks huts with no roof!

A Well or Fountain

Four 2" diameter discs to act as teleport points..

6 Columns or ruined columns.

On top of these specific pieces we will need a selection of generic ruins.

The only one that I have decided to avoid is the Underground Library as I think the work needed in making a mass of book shelves to fill the table, would have limited re-usability, as it could only be used for the one scenario. The rest will hopefully be usable for other fantasy games as well as possibly historical one too.

Thee four discs for teleportation points should be easy enough and even if I can't use them too much, I am sure they can be used as objective markers in future games.

So, first up I have decided to go with the Ruined Wizards Tower.

As this piece has to have a tower and a ruined house at either side of it I used one of the 40x20cm bases that I had made.
I took a length of heavy duty cardboard tube and marked it out where I needed to cut it!

The tube is 4 or 5mm thick, so to tough to cut with a knife. I decided that for speed I would use my Jigsaw. This is a bit dangerous as trying to cut a curved tube can be tricky, I have 30+ years experience as a professional model maker, but for anyone not used to using these saws I would recommend a fair bit of caution when trying to cut tube like this! I also used a 6mm drill to drill some holes that I will shape into windows.

I plan to use Foamcore board for most of the construction work in this series of builds. Foamcore, as the name suggests, is a sandwich of foam with a layer of thin card on both sides. It cuts easily and accurately, and the thickness (I have both 5mm and 3mm sheets) is great for representing ruined walls.

First up I have cut three discs that will be used for the floors of the tower. I simply placed the tube over the foamcore and drew around the inside of it. I am not aiming for perfection with the cutting of the pieces as the ruins will be covered in rubble and this can be used to hide any imperfections...

I cut sections out of the discs to show where the side of the tower had collapsed. Then glued them into the tube.

Next I stated work on the ground floor of the two houses either side of the tower. To hide the edges of the foamcore I cut away the inner side of one edge, removing the inner card and the foam. This leaves a strip of card which can be stuck over the edge of the wall that is glued to it.

I glued the two ground floor buildings on either end. One I had cut open as a ruin but the other I had left intact. I also cut some rectangles of foamcore to build up a staircase to the towers entrance which was raised above the ground.

I decided that both outer building should have open damaged walls on the ground floor, so I used a sharp scalpel to cut the intact one open too. I then repeated the process of building the four walls, to add the first floor on to them. I also cut a rectangle of foamcore for the floor of each house.

I cut windows into the walls of the buildings and also a doorway on one of the first floor walls where it will lead to a bridge into the tower.

It all looks fairly crude at the moment, but as these are all going to be ruins anyway I didn't feel it was necessary to spend to much time making it all neat! Next up I will move of to adding some balsawood and spuce strips to give the buildings some detail and character!