Ghasthollows Cemetery (Minihammer 10mm scale)

The idea behind the theme of the scenery set is Graveyard within the deep forests of Sylvania. Whenever I create a set of terrain I always focus on a single centerpiece, then add a few secondary eye candies and then mass elements.

I planned the Ghasthollows Cemetery as follows:

Centerpiece: Large ruined tower on a hill.
Secondaries: Large flat hill, four medium size movement blocking points of interest.
Other: Two forests, five trees each – standalone trees marking the boundaries of each forest.

Rocks, hills, large boulders, trees I could all deal with making myself, but I required a few more advanced elements to add detail to the scenery set. After searching for appropriate STL files and consulting with a friend willing to print for me, I ended up with a bunch of awesome Gravestones, stone stairways and a downscaled large Lighthouse.

Next came the actual process of creating a rich and detailed scenery.

I started with picking up a few dozen of dry bard pieces from the garden. These I use for rock formations for all my scenery of late. They’re simple to work with and cut in any way to fit the scenery.

I like my scenery properly based, with sturdy, flat bases, to keep terrain from wobbling on the gaming board. Foamed PVC is great for this as it is very light, easy to cut and stays flat.

Finally a few small rocks, 3d printed elements, Super Glue and I was ready to rock!

The ruined tower was the most challenging. I wanted it to convey the decrepit, damaged to a point of collapsing feel of the Oldworld Warhammer. Figured to use matched and printed stone pillars to support the tower on the edge of a partially collapsed rocky formation.

‘Forests’ were supposed to be standalone tress to ease the gameplay. This meant I couldn’t focus on telling a story with a large wood, but had to prioritize small stories told on each individual base. Fortunately I had some parts to use to better represent the dark fantasy theme.

I made the trees using an old Ethernet cable, cut open with its interior small cables pulled out. I twisted small cables in groups of four, modelled base tree shapes out of them, based them around actual stones for weight, then poured a mix of different glues on top of them.

Once hard I textured them with thin Super Glue and Activator.

Once all scenery pieces were modelled and dry I moved to painting process. Painting such small scale is a challenge as in one hand I always want to have a lot of detail, but in the other hand a lot of tiny detail on the elements mean that too many layers might corrupt the final visual result. For this reason I focused on simple techniques like Contrast paints, drybrush and airbrushed filters to bring the best out of the natural textures present across the scenery elements.

Finally I added some Gamers Grass tufts and used Green Stuff World’s Autumn Shrubbery for tree foliage.