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My friends and I are transitioning out of wargaming and back into D&D.

I've been wondering---- how many of you mold and cast your own dungeon terrain? Or do you use blue foam?

I got some blue foam the other day but it seems too soft....

I think you could build a pretty nice dungeon with some kind of base made out of cardboard and plasticard with patterns. For my warband for nurgle(link in signature) I made a small cellar diorama out of styrofoam and plasticard, think you could make a pretty cool dungeon that way.

Karokk--- that looks freaking awesome! Can you give a rough run down of how you created it?

Honestly... I have done the casting, it is a PITA...

HIRST makes wonderful molds, but other people sell licensed 'precast' kits like this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HIRST-ARTS-DUNGEON-TILES-KIT-FOR-DESCENT-OR-ROLEPLAY-28-MM-/250910690472?pt=Games_US&hash=item3a6b714ca8

All you have to do is assemble and paint opposed to buying a 30$ mold and pouring plaster and all that mess.

You can also check out this:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/92980796/super-3d-dungeon-boards

That is a 12x12 board for about 60$. I fyou cast your own hirst mold you would need probably 3 molds and 50$ of material to make one of those tiles.

I have done foam for terrain, but I don't really like it for dungeon stuff as sometimes 'high walls' makes it hard to use and you have to make 'tiles' for easy grid movement. You can make some amazing stuff but it doesn't travel well either.

I really enjoy my tile-based dungeon stuff. Especially the hirst tiles.

Play Deathwatch. All your 40k stuff will be usable as it is.

Have you heard of Hirst Arts? The guy makes and sells molds for casting modular terrain building blocks/tiles/etc. that work beautifully for this exact type of project. Even if you don't want to buy his stuff (whether or not you consider it a good value, in the end, the buy-in isn't exactly cheap), the site has a gallery full of inspirational layouts, as well as tutorials that I think would benefit you, should you decide to make your own molds and cast parts for a layout.

Building out of foam would be the more labor-intensive option, but ultimately cheaper. If your blue foam is extruded polystyrene insulation board, it should be plenty resilient for this type of project, if you aren't actively abusive to your terrain (just be sure to seal it before you use aerosol sprays, lest the propellant melt the surface). Even foamcore with the paper stripped from one side, when mounted to a stiffer base (like MDF), can take regular gameplay with metal models, after some paint and varnish, and it's quite a bit squishier than foam insulation.

Thanks guys. I have experience with molding and casting resin, but I may just end up buying from Hirst.

I'm also toying with the idea of making VERY simple pieces, like one floor section and one wall section, as opposed to different sizes of floors, walls, corners etc.

Might start on a mold this week.... will update.

Hirst Arts is the way to go. The trick is to make larger chunks of flooring out of the small tiles then make molds of the larger chunks.

Zuzzy Matts Falgstone Paven is alos worth looking into.

If you want to go the foam route I recommend the Pink Insulation foam commonly found at big box home improvement places. That, wood glue, sand and modeling putty is all you really need.

 nectarprime wrote:
Karokk--- that looks freaking awesome! Can you give a rough run down of how you created it?

Basically I made a base of 3 cm thick styrofoam and base walls of 1 cm thick styrofoam and glued these together. I then cut out parts of the patterned plasticard(stones) and glued them on to the styrofoam and each other. The small gaps between the styrofoam and plasticard I filled with regular "plaster"(the stuff you use on walls to fix uneven stuff before you paint). And that's pretty much it. I'm pretty sure you can use stiff cardboard or pretty much anything else as the "base" which you get the plasticard on. The reason that you need a base is that the plasticard on it's own is pretty thin, like 1-2 mm.

I never realized that they made platicard with a texture on it already---- AWESOME.

 nectarprime wrote:
I never realized that they made platicard with a texture on it already---- AWESOME.

Yeah there are several different types, I think mine is the 1:43 scale stone wall. If you want to build gateways, stairs etc it's pretty easy to do it from regular plasticard.

I use that air-drying modelling plastic, it comes in a pretty big bag for $6

Makes a fairly large stretch of wall, or floor or whatever you want to make.

I use textured bricks to give it a realistic appearance. (press it on the texture)