SteelonSandBlog: 15mm Dungeon: Harry and the Yonder Stones

Meet Harry - he’s a 15mm Grey Ape originally from the superlative Crom’s Anvil ranges, now stocked by CP Models in the UK - he’s also the first 15mm sized figure that I have painted in years - so be kind!

I had originally envisaged him to be a troglodytic albino Morloch type, looming white and blind in the depths of the dungeon, but, well, he’s come out a bit fluffy-looking and more Yeti or snow beast than Haunter-in the-Dark…… oh well….. he is cute though, and currently as the sole prospective occupant of the dungeon, will be standing in to give some idea of the scale of various items as I progress - hopefully he won’t have to wait around too long for company…..

https://cpmodels.co.uk/product-category/15mm-ranges/croms-anvil/

Here he is atop the TT Combat room tiles, looking the part:

I’ve yet to finish the tiles off completely, and the edges of the set need some tidying up, but I laid out some, just as an example of how they look - below is around a third of the complete set on a round table just shy of 2 feet in diameter - so you can see that you get quite a lot of bang for your buck - I would imagine all of the tiles laid out in a dungeon set up would easily cover around a 4 foot by 4 foot space, allowing for elbow room:

My plan is to start off with various scenic and terrain items, both scratch-built and shop bought, before tackling the miniature occupants - I’m chickening out on plunging into painting figures for the moment - sort of working my way up to it…… I think the fixtures and fittings of the dungeon will be an easier entry in this, to me, a new ‘giant’ scale !

With this in my mind, I set about something simple and easy, namely some stone arches made from blue foam, that could serve as entry points to the underground world, or as plot points for the dungeon crawl itself.

These were formed by rough cutting the shapes, then sanding them down to roughly the right proportions, and then going to town in a ‘roughing-up’ process - chunks cut out with a sharp blade, various holes poked in to form pockmarks and wear, and some vague tracings of maybe Eons-worn carvings - the whole is then covered with a couple of layers of diluted Mod-Podge tinted with black paint - this also serves to harden up the edges as they dry, and give a bit of weight to the piece - then I went in with liberal drybrushing of greys and then some greens to act as mossy growth, with faded white outlines on the inscribed areas:

So we have a couple of large arches, and a stone portal with whirling event horizon to transport you to who-knows where, or to serve as the entry point for who-knows-what……. Well, alright, then, I freehanded a yellowy-gold spiral on the clear base of a flight stand and stuck it between the uprights - but you get the general idea !

Emboldened by how these turned out, I had a go at something a bit larger, with an idea to create a ‘Way Out’ to serve as the end of the adventure - the last point a party might have to pass to reach safety and the daylight……. I had envisioned a towering set of stone steps leading up to an arched exit, blasted by dragon breath, en-slimed and en-sorcelled, but ended up with a kind of giant stone armchair ! - well, at least it looks that way in the photos as Harry gets in on the act: