Hall of Heros

It probably hasn't gone unnoticed that I have been building a lot of terrain this Challenge for a Frostgrave tabletop. Most of the buildings are resin pieces that I have mounted on card, or simple foam buildings I constructed with a range of techniques. I have enough now to cover a reasonably-sized table but I wanted one more large building to top off the set. I didn't really have a clear plan of what I wanted, just a vague idea I didn't want it to be square like all the others. It also needed to be generic enough to serve as a range of possible building types. I've named it The Hall of Heroes but with the addition of some movable terrain items, it could be made to look like a wizards laboratory; a chapel or a mausoleum.

I started off simply by making a big bag of stone blocks, enough to give the building some height. This was a laborious task as I had to make sure they were as close as possible to being consistently sized, so some precision knife work and a lot of patience were required. These blocks then needed to be rolled (to round off the edges) and pressed with stones to give the otherwise perfectly flat surfaces some dimpled stone-like character. This step alone took a whole evening and resulted in a lot of foam dust - be warned, a mask is essential unless you want to breathe this nasty stuff in!

I used a large dinner plate as the template for the circular base, with the additional vestry/corridor added on one side. Then I scored the floor tiles, cracks etc using a pencil and a range of plastic sculpting tools. With the floor, layout sorted I started to build, again without any clear design in mind, and just let the muse take me as I built upwards! I tended to lay a course of bricks, pin them in place and then add another layer the following day when the first lot had died. All very time-consuming but it meant I was able to keep the walls relatively verticle and solid. 

Initially, I was considering buying window frames from a dolls house specialist but I couldn't find what I wanted. They were either the wrong shape or just looked too perfect, so in the end, I tried making some myself. It took a few attempts to get a consistent result using the foam, but I'm pretty happy with the outcome. I'm glad I went with this option as I think windows that were too perfect would not fit with the rest of the building, which purposefully looks like the ravages of time and ice have bowed the walls, worn the stonework and of course collapsed the roof.

I found a couple of small items in my bits box to add to the scratch-built model. First off I added a shrine showing what is presumably a grieving wizard slumped over a great tome. It's suitably melancholic and fitted the 'theme' I had in mind. This model was part of a set bought from Debris of War. The dead tree that had burst through the floor and up the wall is part of a set from Games Workshop that I bought years ago. And the shields on the walls are from Colonel Bill's dark ages set.

As for size here's where it gets mathemagical... The main circular part of the building is 11 inches across with an average height of 5 inches. By the alchemy of Pi that gives an internal volume of this cylinder as 475 cubic inches. The little antechamber or vestry is 2 inches wide, 4.5 inches tall and 9 inches long (as an arc average) giving that a volume of 81 cubic inches giving a total for the whole building of 556 cubic inches. Divide that by 216 (a 6x6x6 cube) gives 2.57, call it 2.5 terrain cubes, which should earn me a tidy 50 points. Phew, all that maths has made my head hurt. That should conclude my Frostgrave Terrain for now, although I do have some other resin items I may work on if I find the time.