Simple terrain from scraps

As you know if you read my blog, I like making cheap gaming materials from junk. This is for several reasons: I like the stimulus to creativity, I like the affordability and I like reusing things that would otherwise wind up in landfill.

So imagine my delight when I discovered the Cambridge Community Scrapstore. This is a place you can go that's just basically a big warehouse full of crafting bits and bobs. I bought a membership and have been a few times, filling my cheek pouches with bits of fabric, card, and miscellaneous junk.

Among the things I got on my first trip were some sheets of fake grass material. I marked out some rough shapes on the back of the sheets with a silver Sharpie, then cut them out with a utility knife.

At this stage, I also brushed the fake grass material a lot because it sheds like mad, especially if the cuts go through the base of a tuft.

The base of the material is flexible, but I wanted to stiffen it a little, so I hot-glued the pieces to sheets of card, which I also got at the scrapstore.

I then cut out the shapes, leaving a little bit of a lip around each one. After cutting out about a third of my grass material, I had enough to fill a shoebox.

These pieces then got a bead of hot glue to seal the edge between the grass material and the card, then a layer of PVA and sand. I let that dry, then painted it light brown with a lighter drybrush and called it good.

As you can see, they're a bit rough and ready, but at a price of pennies I'm perfectly happy with them. They'll serve as reed beds in Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago or my Crusades games, or long grass in other settings. Here's the same patch of long grass with a model for scale.

Apparently, these scrapstores aren't uncommon, so if you like to trash bash you should see if there's one in your area. I expect more frugal gaming posts inspired by the things I find there.

Post-apocalyptic house!

Back in January I was on a post-apocalyptic kitbashing kick, and I decided to put together some scenery using miscast bits I was given by Curtis of Ramshackle Games. I started out doing what usually works best for me -- just sitting down with a big bag of parts and sticking stuff together to see how it worked out. And here's what I came up with:

I built a roof hatch from a spare base and some junk, added fencing from various scraps in my terrain box, built a little planter out of a cut-up old credit card and stuck on various pipes, doors, steps and so on. There was a lot of filing of casting irregularities (remember, these were free miscasts), but other than that I just covered the joins with other panels or whatever. I added some auto-body mesh to create a window screen. 

And then ... then it languished on the painting table for nearly two months while I dealt with other projects. But this weekend past I had some time to paint, so I had a go at it and this is what I came out with: 

The glue in the garden isn't quite dry yet in these shots, so it looks a bit white. Anyway, as you can see I basically just went at it with a big cheap brush and various shades of red, yellow, orange and brown, and I think it looks not too bad. I wanted it to look like an outpost of humanity in the wilderness, so I gave it a garden, and to be extra clever I gave it a garden that creates a patch of land you can't really fit a miniature into without it tilting a bit. Oh well. 

Here's the final thing, inhabited by the Gentleman Scavenger: one man's slice of heaven in a post-apocalyptic hell.

So, I got the board from a friend, the auto-body mesh from a hardware shop, the sticky gems from The Works, the fence from the Lead Adventure sprue exchange, and all the rest of the bits either just from my terrain box or from Ramshackle. Total cost of materials, less than £1. Effect on tabletop: not half bad. 

Frugal gaming: Poundland monument

On the way home from a gig the other day, I stopped into Poundland. They had some little Buddha statues in different poses and I picked one up. I think he'll make a fine objective or piece of scenery for some types of skirmish gaming, although if I'd been smart I would have got several and used them as the basis for weird sci-fi conversions. 

In the depths of the jungle, Doctor Jones goes looking for artefacts of ... historical significance. Yeah, that's the ticket. 

Frugal gaming: bits and pieces

It's been a busy week, but I have been out and about running some errands, and I did get the opportunity to stop into some local charity shops.

This gate is a Mega Bloks toy I got for 30p. Apparently it's a Mag Warriors Dark Portal, although those look greyer than this is. Perhaps it's a different kind of portal? I don't know, but it looks nice, especially for 30p. It even lights up and plays a sort of wub-wub-wub-wub building-up sound, so that'll be useful. I'll have to be careful when I paint it not to cover over the light-up areas. Still, I'm pretty pleased with it. Where's yer Baleful Realmgates now? (Costing 50 times as much is the answer.)

During last night's D&D game.

That Predator doesn't quiiiite fit, but pretty close. 

This miniature isn't a charity shop find or anything, but he was free so I'm including him here as a catchall. He is an Essex Miniatures ... something-or-other, and he is apparently stabbing himself right in the beard. It looks a bit daft, but actually I think he came out not badly with a simple paint scheme. That's a common theme with the Essex models for me.

Similarly, this guy is an Essex model, for whom I have written a longer backstory. He's part of a group of minis who will feature in a little miniscenario I will post up here when I've done them all, which will be ... well. A while.

I think he came out quite well!

Frugal gaming: columns!

Stopped for lunch on the way home and popped into a local charity shop only to find two of these:

8 columns for £4 isn't bad -- it'd be £10 at retail. So I snapped them up and brought them home. They're pretty nice, although they have a hole in the top (for the dowel) that I'm gonna need to fill or cover. Still, between Frostgrave and D&D I represent a lot of ruined temples and great pillared halls, so I'm very pleased with these. Check 'em out:

In the arena of Emperor Pan Augustus, hapless human gladiators fight to the death!

They are a bit stark white at the moment, so I might give them a thin sepia wash and an off-white drybrush just to bring out the texture a bit more and bring them into line with the rest of my ruined classical terrain.

Frugal gaming: cheap summoning circle or plaza thingy

I was in Poundland on Saturday and grabbed up one of these. It's a stepping stone for your garden, and they come in a variety of different designs -- a compass rose, this sun thing and a more moon-looking symbol were the ones I saw, but there could be more. I think it will make a rather nifty feature for dungeons or Frostgrave or wherever.

Here it is in use as a summoning circle for a wizard to bring forth a djinn.

Pretty substantial; not bad for a quid. And a useful reminder that good gaming stuff can turn up more or less anywhere; just keep your eyes open wherever you go.

Frugal gaming: aquarium plants on sale.

I was in Pets at Home today and, as is my wont, I had a bit of a browse among the aquarium plants. I noticed that lots of fish tank plants and ornaments are on sale until the 30th: buy one, get one half-price. I have in the past used some aquarium ornaments as terrain for things like bridges and ruins (see this post, for instance), so I had a look. Nothing grabbed me among the ornaments, although they did have some nice jungle ruins, but I did pick up some plants for £7.50. 

These are mounted on little bases, so I might use them separately. Alternatively, I might make larger bases of some of them, or break them down into smaller pieces to decorate models (or make some modern-day planters). I could paint them a bit, but actually I like their brightness and don't want to put a lot of effort into terrain that's supposed to be quick, easy and cheap, so I might just leave them as they are.

I imagine that the blue ones are some sinister flower that grows in Frostgrave, drawing its nourishment from the latent magic of the place.

Here are some shots of them with models:

"This is a bug hunt, mannnn! A BUG HUNT!"

An intrepid explorer seeks ancient ruins in the jungle.

Some quick works in progress

Just a few quick updates on what I'm working on at the moment. Mostly Frostgrave. Here are the put-together models for my cultists, which I haven't done anything else with.

Thugs! The guy on the left has a spear. 

Man-at-arms (w/ Citadel shield), Infantryman and Thief. May get some more thiefy accessories. 

Archers; guy on the right has Mordheim arms because there's only one set of bow arms in the cultist box. 

They need to be cleaned, puttied, based, etc. before priming, but my hope is that they'll paint up quite quickly (since my goal is to give them rather simple, drab paintjobs to go along with the wizards).

I'm also working on a little terrain for the game. These are the statues for the museum scenario: 

They're made from kids' blocks (I got a big bucket of 'em for £5 from a charity shop), spare bases, bits from the bits box and those pewter historical figurines you get in museum gift shops. My wife got a big bag of the figures in a charity shop for me, so these are cheap as free and suitably historicalish.

I think the texture of the wood will show through the priming, so I'm going to give them a base coat of some kind of texture as well as texturing the base beforehand. I hope to have them done by the end of the holidays!

The charm of display

One of the things I like about my study is that from my desk I can look out over my monitors and see the rest of the study, including my little displays of painted minis and my books and so on. It really boosts my morale and gives me a feeling of satisfaction; silly, I know, but there you are. 

So when I realised that I was annoyed with the process of packing and unpacking terrain I decided that I would just put the pieces out on the shelf. After all, I don't have to keep things in the shed any more. Now I can just pull a piece of terrain out to use in a game without having to get it out of a box -- and better yet, I can just look over at it all and give a little smile every now and again. 

As you can see, the shelves are pretty crowded. I should get some of this little perspex shelves to create multiple tiers, effectively increasing the number of shelves. 

The whole shelf. 

Top shelf: some buildings, mostly scatter. 

Post-apocalyptic scatter. 

Some buildings and more scatter, fences, barricades etc. 

Graveyards, treasure, and the bomb. 

Currently using this stuff for Frostgrave. Church is unfinished, obvs.

Post-apocalyptic/sci-fi/zombie stuff. 

Various! I started running out of room here. 

Hut hut hut

So I am playing some Frostgrave tonight, which motivated me to finish off a piece of scenery I built in preparation for a scenario that requires six (!) little ruined huts. Crikey.

Anyway, it seems clear that the need for fast, cheap scenery has me going back to those mid-90s White Dwarf days, and honestly I'm pretty happy about that fact. I think that my usual standard of stuff I build is a little higher, but ... probably not much.

The only fanciness at all is the coffee stirrers for door posts, which are way too tall but whatever. I drew some texture on with the tip of a dead pen to give them a little more character.

Eh, I approve of free stuff and this is certainly that.

Frugal gaming find: lots of cheap scenery!

I think this may be my best stuff:cost ratio yet -- well, other than free stuff, of course! I went to a jumble sale on Saturday with my wife, who pointed out a big bag of little card building parts for 50p. It turned out to be one of these -- or more accurately two of them in a single bag.

There are also Hogwarts and spaceships versions, which I did not get. Interested in that spaceship one, though, and the Hogwarts one might well be compatible:



Mine was pretty battered, but I spent a cheerful hour or two putting together all the little bits in various combinations. I think they go rather well with 28mm figures -- better, in fact, than with the classic-toy-soldier scale figure that comes with it.

Here's what I made:

Some of the largest pieces, like this one, are made of separate components
that I can pull apart and stick together in different combinations. 

I'm gonna use these to build the weird scenario-specific terrain pieces in Frostgrave, like the huge tower. 

The way they hold together doesn't make a huge amount of sense, but whatever. 

So how much terrain did I get for my 50p?

Awwwwwww yeah. I think that might be a frugal-gaming first. OK, it's not as nice as handmade or specialist stuff, but Frostgrave plays best with a load of terrain and also did I mention 50p?

But wait, there's more, because what is frugal gaming about if not value? While browsing in Hobbycraft I saw this bad boy:

It's pretty tall, but I think it might have Malifaux applications?

Lastly, if you've read all this way, I should point out that the latest issue of The Undercroft is out, containing a monster article for Lamentations of the Flame Princess by yours truly. If you like LotFP in particular or weird-horror OSR gaming in general, why not check it out?