Monday, February 11, 2013

Henge of Stones

With some polystyrene blocks from eBay (2 foot by 2 foot by 1 inch) as well as a cheap bit of MDF that I had cut to 1 foot by 1 foot I now have lots of building materials for super cheap scenery.

The first thing I wanted to make was a standing circle of bit stones, a megalithic structure. I worked out a general shape and set to cutting...


Here it is glued together and based with my customary sand sprinkling. (In the background you can see my paper sketch.) The keys for me were that I wanted it to be a decent obstacle/defensive position. To that end there are two large entrances in the outer circle, and only one in the inner circle. The gaps between the uprights are too narrow to squeeze through, but will still allow archers to shoot out. The "path" for want of a better word is wide enough for a cavalry base to fit, so only largish monsters won't be able to fit. A flying creature can land in the center.


I covered it with several layers of watered down glue and then sprayed it black. Unfortunately I didn't do a very good job of glue coverage and I had a LOT of disintegrating from the spray. Fortunately it's meant to look like weathered rock so I guess it's not so bad. 


Here we are after one heavy drybrush of dark grey. I used really cheap art paint for this and just mixed black and white together.


And here we are after several layers of grey. One dark, one medium, one light. This is outside so the lighting is a bit better!


And the top-down view...


I gave it a bit of a black wash on just some bits to tone it down and give a bit of definition to it. Then Buhrdur decided to make it his camp for the night and some Haradrim decided that he was desecrating a sacred structure...


From down low you can see that the stones tower nicely, but not too high - I still wanted to easily be able to move my troops around in there!


And here you can see one of the many opportunities that archers will be able to take. 


With many people worried about the so-called archery nerf I thought that something like this might be a good way of showing that some terrain can make a bit of a difference. The outside ring should be easily climbable too, giving an archer a nice view of the surrounds.

So there you go, one step-pyramid and one henge of stones... whatever will come next?

7 comments:

  1. Nice, nice, I always enjoy looking at home-made scenery and take ideas for mine.
    I would strongly recommend you to use high density polystyrene. It is painted easier (I think it doesn't disintegrate from spray, though not sure) and is more durable. Also, it doesn't make when cut those small little polystyrene bubbles that make the whole place a mess. HDPE isn't really expensive, most hardware stores sell them usually. Lastly, maybe you should make the corners rounded, as it gets to damage if left as a square.
    And a question: how do you take so well pictures from so near (p.e. pic No 8).
    Again, nice work, looking forward to more of your projects, always inspiring!

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    1. Can't get the high density stuff here in Australia. Well, you can from a couple of places for a LOT of money!

      I agree I wish I'd not left the edges so sharp! Initially I was going for a "new" henge look rather than an ancient one, but it didn't work out that way in the end!

      The pictures are taken with my camera in aperture mode (if your camera has it you could check the user manual?) I often take a few as well so you see the one that worked rather than the ones that didn't =)

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  2. Looks good! Love photo 8 too - that's one nasty looking troll!

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  3. I love this site- in particular I am a huge dwarf fan and what you have done with the gw dwarves is amazing. I would like to see a mumak vs balrog battle report though.. =)

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  4. Where did you get the idea for that Harad color scheme by the way?

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    1. I just chose colours that I liked. I really like the "enchanted blue" colour so went with it and sort of wanted a desert kind of feel as well, so that's why the turbans are light, the skin is dark and the pants are a sort of neutral brown colour. The red was necessary as a sort of divider/spot colour I think.

      Anyway, nothing really groundbreaking or technical!

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