Frostgrave / Dungeon Tiles: Mausoleum

Frostgrave has grabbed my attention and shaken my hobby plans right up into the air. So I'm trying to ensure anything that I now make for Frostgrave can be multi-used for my dungeon/ Heroquest project as well and "multi-purpose" has become my new hobby catchphrase. So having bought the Frostgrave rulebook (it's a lovely piece of work; the rules seem simple and straightforward to pick up and there is a real old school Oldhammer flavour with the inherent need to create terrain, use your favourite models to create warbands and to play to a narrative/campaign with the chance of advancing your character - exactly what I have strived for ever since I came across GW's Realm of Chaos). There are a lot of similarities between the two systems which I may go into further in a future post...

The Mausoleum scenario describes the terrain set up as :

"A small or rectangular building.....The sides should be at least 6". Each side of the building has a door in the middle of the wall (this doesn't need to be depicted on the terrain)."

So with that in mind and having conducted my usual image research for inspiration (both real and modelled mausoleums), I dived in by carefully measuring everything out! 6" is the equivalent of four squares on one of my dungeon tiles, so it fitted perfectly with the measuring system I already had in place:

All the parts laid out after careful measuring and cutting. The building is constructed from foamcard, with a couple of plaster of paris cake decoration pillars and a bit of plasticard. At this stage I was torn between a wooden curtain rail pole end and a Christmas bauble for the domed roof.

Detail of the door. Four rectangles are cut out to add depth, four small rivets punched out of some plasticard and a push-tack with a cool star emblem in the middle pushed through.

Gluing the walls together with pva and a trusty elastic band to keep the pressure on so I can keep my hands free and move on to the next part.

Scraps of right-angled foamcard are used to strengthen the corners

Smaller construction of the pitched roof for the entrance. Foamcard walls and thin plasticard for the roof. A piece of plastic piping to cover the join at the apex. An old Bretonnian shield from my bitz box was added to create a piece of history/narrative for the occupant of the mausoleum.

Putting the roof on and gluing the pillars into their place. Lots of careful measuring to ensure everything is central and symmetrical (and the correct height). At the front of the flat roof you can see the scored card I used to cover the edges of the exposed foamcard.

The final raised roof with the wooden pole end used. Finding the central point from corner to corner is useful for this additon.

The completed structure. I quite like the contrast of very angular lines with the curved dome.

To create the stone effect, the entire structure was coated in a thinned layer of Polyfilla. It creates a nice texture to paint onto and was used to fill any tiny gaps between different panels. Obviously my measuring and cutting was so precise to not worry about this!

A last minute addition. After the building had been painted dark grey and drybrushed with successive lighter tones, I found some old  Letraset letter rubbing sheets. I fancied some Latin inscription and went for "Dead Lead" which translates to Plumbum Mortuis. (I now know why lead is labelled Pb in the periodic table..)

All the stonework is finished, just a corroded door to add

Some weathering with thin glazes of greens and browns

And the final piece. For the dungeon tile itself I quite simply painted a white, yellow orange  mix of acylic colour, with the lightest colour emanating from the center of the tile. When this was dry I then drybrushed my usual dark grey (but covering most of the tile away from the middle and less in the middle) and then drybrushed lighter tones of grey as normal. It didn't take very long to get quite a cool (or warm) glowing effect.

And finally these sarcophogi are from Dark Art Studios and were painted really quickly to add to the narrative of the dead being awoken. I have a bunch of Heresy Ghouls which I would like to add to this idea...

So I intend to use this for either my Family Heroquesting/Dungeoneering or for some Frostgrave once I've finished my numerous, nearly completed warbands...