Rage Against the 'Styrene- 'Filling In The Name Of .

Jay's Terrain rage-quit.

"It's easy" they said.

"It's just polystyrene" they said.

"Just cover it in polyfiller" they said.

Let's just get something straight from the get go. I'm Scottish. This apparently means I am tight fisted when it comes to cash. Correct.

This genetic defect has recently lead to me taking on a terrain project as "surely it must be cheaper to just make my own". Thus my first foray into terrain building after 20 years gaming.

When we decided to play Frostgrave, it quickly dawned that all the terrain we own is either sci fi or WW2. As Hoops and James have recently pumped a fair bit of time and money into WW2 terrain it was only fair that I bite the bullet on FG terrain.

But...I am not a terrain guy. I can paint to a good standard, and fast. I can pick up a ruleset really quick. But I cannot do terrain. It bores me to tears. As much as I love the sight of two fully painted forces, fighting over a lush battlefield, I would rather punch myself in the throat than get involved in the production of said battlfield.

Testament to how excited I am to play Frostgrave, I decided to head to the shed, brandishing a glue gun I had 'liberated' from work. I had just bought a dehumidifier and it came with lots of polystyrene sheets. How hard could this be? Glue it, cover it in polyfiller, paint, drysbrush...boom. Easy.

I initially looked at the polystyrene bits I had and worked out I could knock up a couple of raised ziggurat sort of thingys, a tomb and a couple of arches/ pond area. After an hour or so of cutting and PVA I had the following knocked up:

At this stage I was quietly confident that this was going really well. After measurements these items would cover a lot of a 3x3 table (recommended for Frostgrave). bearing in mind this terrain is a 'make do' until I stop being so miserly. So I allowed these to dry properly over night and as I went to sleep, dreamt of the rave responses to my terrain.

Well dreams are dreams for a reason kids.

Unaware of the upcoming torment, I got hold of some poster paints and powdered polyfiller at the cost of about £12. "This is a small amount to pay to cover such a vast gaming area", thought I.

Excitedly getting home I mixed up some polyfiller, with some PVA glue and black paint. This created a smooth grey paste which I liberally smeared everywhere...on the terrain that is. I had read about this method on the internet, the most reliable source of info ever. Well, being a terrain genius I mounted all of the poly on cardboard bases, this card proceeded to absorb all the water from the mixture and turn flaccid, that is the only word to describe it. Bits of polystyrene were going everywhere as the brush I was using touched it, little white balls of hate all over the place. And don't get me started on the powdered pollyfiller, that had grown legs and gone all over das platz too, it was like Michael Barrymore had had a party in my dining room.

Anyways, after a few 'woo-saa' moments, I managed to get most of the bits filler'd and painted grey (my wife stepped in to help at one point, she said she could feel the heat of my frustration two rooms away). Here is how it looked at this point:

I wanted to throw it all in the bin, it had frustrated me to the point of screaming at inanimate objects and telling them how I would dispose of them...slowly.

Next day, after I had cooled off, I decided I had come too far, and would not be defeated by some plastic and card board.

I was wrong again.

From the previous stage I made a lighter Gray and drybrushed all the dark grey 'stone' parts from the previous day. All the polyfiller flaked away, nay, the pollyfiller went ablative and exploded off of the polystyrene on contact with my brush. I went from zero to nuclear in 0.4 seconds. The cardboard was still flaccid form yesterday and the 'bridge' on the temple broke under the strain. Not the strain of it's weight, but the strain of my incandescent rage ripping it apart. Now I am usually the person least likely to anger, but I was shouting at an aloe vera plant at this point. How could this be so hard? What did I do wrong? I asked said plant.  Let me tell you what I did wrong; I did not understand my limits. I read a guide and thought "Easy". Well some say its good to find these limits, I would slap 'some' with this sheet of flaccid grey cardboard if I seen him in the street.

I took five. Re-assessed and pushed myself to plough on, nothing is beyond repair. I have glue and I have paint. I could rebuild this, I had the technology.

Ok so covered up the ablative damage with some brown static flock, this looked ok so I chucked a bit more around, you would have though Susan Boyle had shaved (her face) near my terrain. I then used a mix of bicarbonate of soda and PVA to mount some snow like stuff around. This now makes the terrain look like it was pulled off the set of Scarface but I guess it will have to do. I used some yellow flock to make the terrain 'pop' a bit, and I intend to put some green on there. I also cut down the card around the edges, as it was floppier than a labour party gathering. Lefties.

Here are the three surviving pieces. The rest are in the shed and doubtful to return. Odds are only plastic models will be able to stand on this terrain, the weight of a lead model will likely make it explode and pepper the players with shrapnel, like some kind of claymore mine made of pure bottled fury. 

Things I have learned:

Humility.

Buy pre mixed filler.

Buy pre made terrain.

There is a vein in the side of my head that was not there before.

Jay