I’ve made some scratchbuilt terrain in recent months and it was fun! Dark Age terrain is pretty easy to make and you can put it together from some basic materials: wooden sticks, cardboard, paper – whatever you have on hand. First on: a hovel, with Jomsviking for scale:
I’ve made roof using towels, with this method from An Hour of Wolves blog. Just pick up some old towel, cut it into strips and paint it with a mix of watered down pva glue and brown paint and then drybrush.
I’ve used some kind of DIY foam in sheets that I stolen from my wife’s scrapbooking stash. It has this nice texture with very tiny holes that looks great as a wall.
Building is then glued into base with grass, tufts and other vegetation.
Next up: stone walls! These were made from real pebbles that you can buy in craft store or in my case – in home design shops. It’s the kind of decorative gravel used to fill flower vases. You can get a lot of this tiny pebbless for like $2-$3.
I’ve made them using method from Wargames Illustrated magazine by stacking them up, and then gluing layer after layer with PVA glue. When painted and drybrushed in various greys, they look fantastic and can be used for many settings – from ancients and fantasy to ACW. These walls are also very sturdy and
Jomsviking for scale.
A fire. Base + wooden splinters painted very dark gray and drybrushed. Fire painted with reds and yellows and the smoke is made from teddy bear filler.
Cool terrain! And I’m definitely stealing that campfire idea 😉