Recently I discovered a game called Brawl Arcane 28 on Instagram and I was hyped to build a custom ultimate dungeon terrain board.
Since a while now, I’ve planned to craft an ultimate dungeon terrain style board in a picture frame. This way I could hang it on a wall. Storage space starts becoming a serious issue for me …
That game uses a square foot print, but in the end it doesn’t really matter. At our local cheapo store, I couldn’t find any square frames. Thus I opted for a rectangular shape of 40 x 30 cm. I also chose a larger square size than your standard 1″. Thus I settled at 3 x 3 cm tiles.
I cut individual tiles of varying thicknesses to cover a field of 10 x 13 squares. Meaning I cut 130 foam tiles using my Proxxon foam cutter. I put them in my metal coffee tin together with some sharp stones to texture the tiles and round of the edges. After that, I further textured some with my self-made texture tool, a Green Stuff World texture roller and with some other textured pieces.
I then glued everything on the back of the frame using PVA glue.
Once dry, I mixed some tile grout, black paint, PVA-glue and water. I then applied the mixture all over the floor tiles and slightly wiped off the excess from the tile’s raised surfaces, leaving the “mortar” mainly in the recesses. Afterwards I left everything to dry.
Painting the Ultimate Dungeon Terrain
Firstly I coated the board in black Mod Podge and let it dry thoroughly.
Next I painted the tiles in black and light grey using my airbrush. I applied more grey in the middle part of the board to simulated light and to shift the focal point to the center.
After that zenithal priming, It was a matter of applying some brown washes and inks through the airbrush to act as color filters.
I also airbrushed the joints between the tiles using a dark wash to accentuate the squares. In every corner I applied a spritz of green ink to simulate moist spots or moss.
Then, it was time to dry brush. I dry brushed a light peach color first. then I applied a light dry brush of white as a final highlight. I used a large make up brush for these steps.
Finally I gave everything a coat of a black water based wood stain. This acts as a wash and ties it all together. I wiped of the excess with a paper towel and left the board to dry.
In the end I sealed the whole thing using a cheap matte varnish from a spray can.
The only thing left, was to fix the tile board into the frame. I of course removed the glass and the paper passepartout. And with that last step, the Brawl Arcane ultimate dungeon terrain board is done!
I modeled the pillars after an excellent video tutorial by Black Magic Craft:
I won’t go into details building these pillars, since it’s very well explained in that video. I admit, this technique works really well and is super fast.
Stay tuned for the next chapter of Miniature masonry.
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