Craft Section
The 20-Minute Monolith
by Lanse Tryon aka Froggy the Great
On a whim, I threw together a stone circle in 20 minutes, including the time spent looking for supplies and tools. These work well for Significant Locations for your Warlord campaign, deployment areas for your Faerie Armies, portals, or anything else that might meet your terrain needs.
Materials Needed:
- White glue
- old paintbrush (I used a 5/8" flat from the discount bin.)
- Hobby knife or hot-wire foamcutter
- Old Duran Duran or AOL CD
- Styrofoam (pink insulation board is best if you have it)
- Very fine-grit sandpaper.
- Flocking materials (sand, ballast, static grass, etc)
Instructions:
Figure out what you want your circle to look like. I want a circle of five monoliths, to allow for standard-sized Warlord bases to easily pass between the gaps. This means that I want my monoliths to be about 1.5" tall and no more than 3/4" wide at the base. If the bases are any wider than that, then the gaps between stones will not be large enough.
Cut a strip of the foam that a little wider and deeper than your desired base width and a few inches longer than the total combined height of all the monoliths you want. Cut the foam strip into sections. Each section will be one monolith.
Slice off bits and pieces of each section so that it looks like a rock. Go at weird angles, and try to avoid any right angles or regular patterns. You want to make something that looks like it's been exposed to the wind and rain for years, but still kept its shape. Remember the joke about sculpting an elephant where you take a block of stone and cut away everything that doesn't look like elephant? That's what you're doing here.
With the sandpaper, clean up any uneven cuts or too-sharp edges.
Figure out how you want each rock to stand. Position them around the rim of the CD, so that they are standing roughly where you want them to be. If any of your monoliths fall over, now is when you want to make sure they have flat bases.
If desired, glue something down over the hole in the center. I used one of the plastic inserts that are packed with the Warlord blisters, to keep the cards from being scratched by the minis.
Put a splop of glue down where each monolith will be standing. Note that if you use superglue, you will melt your monolith.
Glue the monoliths down on the CD. If the project has taken more than 10 minutes, you're going a lot slower than I am.
Allow the glue to dry thoroughly. I'm sure you've got minis you need to paint, right? Go paint one.
When the glue is dry, paint the monoliths. I find that neither Testors Spray Enamel nor Dullcote will not melt Styrofoam, though practically every other brand will. If you spray your monolith, test it on a scrap first. No really, you need to test this before spraying your project. Yes, that means you. I sprayed my monolith black, the drybrushed through dark grey, medium grey, light grey, and white. Don't worry about getting paint on the CD, you'll be covering that up.
With a cheap brush or toothpick, spread white glue over the entire top of the CD, and flock to taste.
Seal the piece. Testor's Dullcote may work, assuming your spray-tests didn't melt foam. White glue thinned with water at about a 1:8 ratio also works.
Add faeries or druids according to taste, and let stand for about 1500 years. Garnish with the blood of your enemies and serve cold.
Add faeries or druids according to taste, and let stand for about 1500 years. Garnish with the blood of your enemies and serve cold.
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