Scratchbuilding Frostgrave Terrain (including icicle tutorial)

With winter around the corner I thought it would be fun to finally properly sink my teeth into Frostgrave. To start of I played a test game of the v2 ruleset (and got my own copy of the new booklet). At that point I decided I needed properly frozen terrain in my collection and a gaming mat to play it on. Here's the result of the first batch of terrain I built. 

Frostgrave: adventure awaits in the heart of the frozen city.

As I've been meaning to do more with (extruded) polystyrene, almost all the terrain has been carved from it. For those of you wondering, its the big plates you use to insulate your roof. I used my hotwire set-up and the helpful book Buildings: Tabeltop Terrain from XPS Foam as reference. The plan was to get some stylish looking walls and a bit of scatter terrain that'll fill a Frostgrave table. As the average table size for this game is 3'x3' (90x90cm) that takes considerably less terrain than a standard wargame. On the other hand, skirmish games need lots of terrain so maybe that's not entirely true.

This city needs a huge vase I say!  

Rifling through my garbage collection box for large bits I found a bag with four cheap plastic golden trophies (I think you're supposed to hand them out at a kids party. I glued a 32mm base on top of two, made a little 'stone' base from xps at the bottom and added a golbular sticking pin to the top. Add paint and snow and taadaa instant odd sculpture you'll liable to find in the gardens of Versailles. 

Not all hills are made of hill.

Every table needs a hill (I think) and what better way to raise the terrain than with a terrain raiser. I cut a 1'x1' (30x30cm) 2" (5cm) high square plate of xps and used some stones and a 3B pencil to texture it with stone and tilework. As with all the other terrain it was covered with textile hardener after paint was applied. The entire things feels as if its made out of plastic and is strong enough to survive gaming. 

I'm quite sure this poor Elf never expected to end up as a statue in a frozen city.

I wanted my frozen city to have an interesting looking statue so I made a pedestal and added a slightly damaged antique elf miniature to its top. Adding icicles to the shield managed to really tie the entire model together I think. 

Looks mysterious, lets drink from it...

One of the first missions in the Frostgrave book is a run on a magical pool in the city. That had to be carved with extra care of course. I used transparent epoxy to fill the pool, adding small transparent balls and fluorescent paint to it before it dried. The balls are utterly invisible so that part of the experiment failed. Luckily the transparent paint makes it all look quite magical enough. 

Are you quite sure we are in the right cursed city?

So there it is. Quite a nice basic set of terrain to get some adventures in the frozen city going. I still have a small round temple-like structure on my painting table that's not quite fully finished yet. There's also a set of six 3D-printed treasure chests going my way to round of the collection. Next step is indoctrinating my better half (already in progress) and getting some games in over the holidays. 

Quick 28mm icicle tutorial 

For those of you wondering about the snow. I bought two humongous (for 28mm purposes) bags of fake snow to throw over one of those shelf sold Christmas villages beneath the tree. I paint PVA glue to parts that would hold snow and sprinkle this slightly oversized stuff on. The I take a pinch of baking soda and add it to the top. The cheap Christmas snow adds sparkles and the baking soda makes it all look slightly more to scale. I added a top layer of spray on glue to my first batch of walls. This turns the snow slightly yellow (don't eat that ;) so I stopped doing that. On to the icicles.

Making icicles turned out to be more of a pain than I expected.

I really wanted to add a few icicles to my buildings because that just adds to the entire wintery feel. I even took quite a bit of extra time and effort making these gothic arches to give me a place to put icicles. Then I went online to find a proper tutorial. Let me start with a few things that did not work out for me :).

Yeah! I've managed to turn a flying stand into a burned blob of plastic in three easy steps.

Mostly you get the advice to use a flying base stand, heat it up and watch it magically transform itself into a set of icicles. These tutorials don't warn you that if your heated plastic snaps it curls up and you end with small blackened bits of useless plastic (that you promptly photograph against the backdrop of the ugliest piece of kitchen towel on the planet). As I'm not the proud owner of a flying base stem factory I had to look onwards.

It seemed like a good idea when I started.

As I was pouring transparant epoxy into my well I though I might as well make some icicles with it. I checked my supply of hobby materials and made a small set of air dry clay icicle shapes. I then used silicone molding material to make a rubber mold of these. That process sucked as it took me an hour to remove broken bits of clay from the mold. I did it anyway and poured in the epoxy, let it dry overnight and discovered the next day it didn't pour quite as nicely as the resin I usually use. I ended up with ugly globs of useless epoxy.

Pro-tip: don't crumple a 'forgotten bit' of baking paper when you're trying this. You might just ruin a batch of icicles. This never happened to me of course *cough* *cough*.

Getting slightly desperate I dropped globs of Vallejo Water Texture onto a bit of baking paper. Using a toothpick I pushed the globs into sort-off icicle shapes and let that dry overnight. 

Not quite icicle-like enough....

The next day I pulled (most of) my shapes off the baking paper and added a fresh blade to my scalpel.

There we go.

I cut the shapes (for want of a more elegant way to put it) to shape. I even discovered I could cut a longer icicle in two and just add extra points. These where glued to the buildings using multi-purpose glue. As it dried I added an extra glob of the water effects to the base to cover up the glue and add a bit of strength. It may nog look as nice as the molten plastic icicles you see online, but it is a quick and easy way to add icicles. 

All you need to make a city is some XPS foam, a 3B pencil and a ruler.

Because I can't resist I'll end this post with a WIP of the raised bit of city. XPS is a real joy to work with.