Friday, 26 October 2018

Cave Tiles - A New Way (Part 2) - Painting

Part one can be found here.

I finished off the tiles yesterday and got a chance to try them out last night.  They worked well, though there are some things I might tweek in future versions.

Following the 'Black Magic Craft' undercoat (black paint and Mod Podge) I sponged on a heavy coat of medium grey, followed by a lighter coat of light grey.  I then very lightly sponged on a reddish brown to dirty them up a bit, and a dark green focusing mostly near the walls.  The pit props were given a coat of dark brown and then an overbrush of VGC Khaki.  To finish off the top surface was given a good coat of a Wilko test pot colour called Nearly Black or similar, its actually a dark brown that rather reminds me of the old Citadel Foundation Charadon Granite.

Here they are in all their glory.  This is part of the old dwarf mine complex in The Lost Mine of Phandelver.  The heroes (and assorted dogs) have cautiously approached a dead end.  Amongst the rubble dwells an Ochre Jelly, which did have trouble hitting the heroes, but when it did, it hurt!

Appart from the odd 'boulder', actually some of the beads from the polystyrene, there is no texture on the cave floors.  I could fix this by adding sand or even hot glue; if this was done before painting, even better.  Also the edges look scruffy; again not a big issue for this quick build, but they could have benefited from cardboard cladding.  I actually will make a few more as I found I was short of right angles for the mines and could do with more cave edge tiles for the bigger caverns.  These will be done to match the existing set though.

In the future I am tempted to make another set fully compatible with my Wyloch Cardlock castle tiles, though this would be a more involved project.  Using foam board as the cave floors would allow me to add more texture, and cardlock bases eliminate the scruffy cut corrugated card look.  I'd probably use XPS foam rather than polystyrene ceiling tiles as well, though the rubble top surface looks good, they are messy to work with and I'd be able to cut thicker walls and give them more detail using my Proxxon cutter.

2 comments:

  1. They do look good, and could even be incorporated into many other games such as Vanguard?

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    1. Absolutely. I've a few more to do to make the set suitable for the Lost mine adventure. I'm not laying out the whole complex at once, but I'm short of a handful of pieces to do the caverns, and a couple more corners for the mines as well.
      I'll use some of the Terrain Crate mine pieces to add flavour.

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