Ruins Project

A while back I found this great building material at our FNCS (Friendly Neighborhood Craft Store) Pat Catan's.  These Styrofoam blocks are designed for school projects, dioramas etc., and they come primed to give them a rough, somewhat hard surface.

This is how they come. The rest is up to you!

If you can't find them locally, you can Google search "project bricks" for several places to order.


As you will see from this and other posts, I am NOT the world's best modeller, best painter, or handiest handyman!  I try to shoot for a sane mix of functionality, ease of construction, and a reasonably good looking, gaming friendly finished project...at least from 3 feet away.  These blocks suit my style of unplanned, impatient, no frills building.  They are extremely easy to cut, shape, glue, and they take paint nicely.  At first they can be a bit crumbly to cut/shape, but soon you will get the hang of how to work them to get some great effects.  Besides, you can always use any scraps for rubble piles!

I finally got around to playing, I mean working, with these blocks a while back.  I decided on some simple ruins that would fit with our Middle Earth campaign, but still be generic enough to use for other settings as well. In the end I made two similar pieces. The first one was just to test the waters of this new medium.  My son, seeing the first one nearing completion, got an idea for a slightly different ruin for his Middle Earth RPG scenario that was in preparation at the time.  Of course he wanted it for the express purpose of messing with us players (don't know where he gets these ideas since I have never messed with players when I'm GM)!

So, here I am, ready to go.  Got my Project Bricks and...
-a 1" thick piece of blue (or pink, or white) insulation foam about 9" in diameter
-a piece of 1/8" hardboard about the same diameter as the foam
-white glue (hot glue is also recommended on the box)
-a sharp knife or three, various sizes, emphasis on sharp, X-Acto for fine work
-toothpicks, round
-Medium to fine sand paper
-CelluClay brand instant papier mache (really handy stuff)
-Plaster of Paris
-large mixing bowl and spoon
-shaping devices: a kitchen knife or small putty knife (I use palette knives) and fingers
-acrylic craft paint
-ground scatter of choice

Get Mom's permission to use some of the above items especially if secured from the kitchen.  As a bachelor the kitchen is my realm anyway so I take what I want!  Besides, the items clean up easily if you do it right away.

First step: Make the base.

I wanted the ruins to be on a small rise so I started with the 1" blue foam and 1/8" hardboard.  I just roughed out the shape of the hill with my trusty knife, carved some crude stairs with an X-Acto, and glued them together.  You don't absolutely need the wood base, but I like the extra stability, durability and weight it adds to the finished product.  Any kind of thin wood would do, but I like the hardboard because it comes with a smooth and a rough side.  I put the rough side down and the piece grips my felt terrain cloth and will stay where it is placed.

While the glue dries on the base start working on the blocks.

The blocks are easy to cut and shape.

I cut some blocks in half lengthwise for the foundation and angled them a bit since I wanted a round structure. I  left an opening at the stairs and started to build the "walls".  The blocks are not completely standard in size, but you can fit them as you go which gives a nice effect for stonework and especially ruins. The neat thing is you can pinch, roll, crumble, and otherwise make misshapen lumps out of these things just using your fingers.  Perfect for ruins, old castles, and rubble!

The foundation is laid and the back wall started.

The blocks fit well with 28mm figures, but would be adequate for 20mm or even 15mm as well.

 Being ruins, block placement was not critical, and besides, as usual, I had no plans anyway! With some judicious matching and a little sanding you can get a much more finished look.  Toothpicks were used in the uprights, and in some of the more precarious pieces, for added stability, and game table survivability.  I used Aleene's fast dry tacky glue, but any white glue would do.  Hot glue will work on the blocks for those even less patient than I, just be careful gluing that first layer to the foam.  I use low temperature hot glue on foam occaisionally, but you cannot get the glue nozzle too close to the foam for too long. Plus it is not advisable if using a hot wire cutter after you glue.

Next step, the plaster mix!

I let the blocks dry at least overnight before continuing (24 hours would be best). Then my next step is to build up the hill a little.  I use a mixture of  about 2/3 CelluClay to 1/3 plaster. This gives a smooth, lightweight  paste that will be hardened by the plaster, but not too brittle.  You could use traditional papier mache, straight plaster, spackling compound, Durham's Water Putty, or even caulk instead (more on the wonders of silicone caulk in future posts).  You could also eliminate this step and go straight to flocking, but I have found that this mix adds durability to the foam, and allows you to adjust the hill's shape without any nasty fine cutting or sanding of the insulation foam.  This works especially well when using multiple scraps of foam to build up your terrain.  At this point, brown, green or gray paint (my three "primary" terrain colors) could be added to the mix, or even some white glue if you like.

Plaster mix added.

I smeared the plaster on with an artist's palette knife, of which I have various sizes.  The mix can be put on as thick, or thin, smooth or rough as you want.  Mine was on the thin side, but left fairly rough. If you want to get the this mixture really smooth it is easiest to use fingers dipped in a little water to smooth the surface.  At this point the walls could also be partially plastered for a more finished look. The more adventurous/artistic could even experiment with some fresco painting! After the mix has dried (about 24 hours) it is ready to be painted and flocked. 

Painted and ground cover added.

For this stage I used a slightly watered down mix of white glue and acrylic paint that I keep handy in old glue bottles.  I used medium gray with a black wash on the blocks, then a quick dry brush of light gray.  Then I liberally applied some of my brown and green glue mixes around, and in some cases right up on to the stones, and then applied my scatter.  let dry and you are done!  I usually go quite simple at this stage, but you could add static grass, weeds, flowers, or other such flora as available.  There could even be a tree growing out of one of the stones (next project)!

The bard Mavi checks out the ruins.

Not the greatest picture of the miniature, but the stone work is in better focus.  The coarseness of the blocks can be lessened with sanding, a light coat of plaster etc. if you prefer something smoother.  Of course, using my 3 foot rule, the roughness adds nicely to the impression from a distance.  You can see in this picture how the blocks were pinched and crushed to give that crumbled look.

Some ruins in winter.

The next piece used the exact same methods, except the plaster was spread on more liberally to create the snow effect.  It is not that clear in the photo, but some of the drifting effects came out quite nicely.  The precariously sagging doorway is braced with good old fashioned round toothpicks (a most indispensable item). 

There's that dang bard again.

These snowy ruins were built specifically for  my son Zack's scenario he ran for our group's Middle Earth campaign.  I thought we would explore these ruins on some frigid mountain top, but nooooo! One of our more reckless party members got teleported into a snow globe style trap and barely made it out alive (not me, but it could have been...whew)!  I plan on more of these structures, and even some more ambitious projects.  By the way, these two projects barely touched the box of Project Blocks!  According to the box it holds 285 blocks.  I figure I used maybe 40 altogether.