Terrain Testing: Sectional Interior Castle/Dungeon Terrain

With terrain now being a part of this year's upcoming painting Challenge, I've resurrected a project that that's languish in the "should do but don't" list a long time - sectional interior terrain for skirmish and role playing games..  I really like some of the commercially available sets (Dwarven Forge and Lunesdargent) but they are expensive and hard to customize so wanted to build my own.

This weekend I built two test pieces trying different stone "textures" and wall sizes.  Each section will be 4x4 inches in size and built out of 1/2 inch wide Extruded Polystyrene Foam (EPS) or "pink insulation foam.  I used my trusty proxxon hot wire cutter and straight edge guide to cut the foam to size.  I'll post more details on construction at the end of this post.  I tested two types of wall style stone blocks and random stones:


Option A: Stone Blocks.  These were carved into the foam using a dull pencil and just eyeballed.  I added a 28mm Frostgrave Barbarian for scale but didn't think the grab a painted one - the grey plastic kind of blends in but you get the idea.

 As these are test pieces, everything was done super quick

I like how the floor came out but am so-so on the walls.  Perhaps drawing the stone on the walls with a bit more care would be in order.

Option B: Randon stones.  After watching Black Magic Crafts video review of Greenstuffworlds's texture rolling pins, I picked up a few to try out.  I used the cobblestone road one to try a make random stone texture for the walls.  The technique is simple - just bear down and roll the texture pin across the face of the foam.

 Everything the same size as the previous test.

The texture came out fainter than I wanted - probably because I didn't push down hard enough to really embed the pattern.

What do your guys think?

Construction Process (all pretty much stolen from Black Magic Crafts videos):

- Use a hot wire table cutter to cut your EPS down to size.  In this case thats 1 4x4 inch base plus 2 1.5x4 inch walls.  All of the pieces are 1/2 inch wide.  I tried different wall sizes (1,1.5,2,3 & and even 4) and found 1.5 inches had the best combination of appearance and practicality (players can see and grab figures).

- Before assembling add in your texture of choice

- glue the pieces together - I use Eileens Tacky glue but any type of pva will do.  I also added some toothpick "columns" to act as structural support

- Prime everything with a black primer/hardener - I uses a roughly 50/50 mixture of modge podge and black paint.  This covers the pink color and really strengthens the piece.

- Paint in a dark gray

- Dry brush on a lighter grey

- Wash with a wash of diluted black paint