INTO THE DARK
Build a cave system for Modiphius’ Call to Arms system - usable in any dungeon game!
This is the first part of a two part article. As you will see, this issue will deal with construction and – next month – Gavin takes us through finishing and painting. Ed.
INTRODUCTION
The Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms is a narrative wargame with 32mm miniatures set in the world of the Bethesda computer game The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. Into The Dark is the procedural Delve generator – a Delve being a single player or co-operative mission. Into the Dark allows you to randomly generate a series of chambers for your party of heroes to explore, populates them with enemies and gives you an overall quest objective, as well as chamber specific objectives to achieve before you move from chamber to chamber. Eventually you have to face the Ultimate Guardian to achieve your quest objective, gather the loot and return to a nearby inn to tell tales of your might deeds!
One of the two initial themes included in Into the Dark are caves. All chambers are based on tiles of 12” square, with between one and four tiles making up a chamber. The rules give you charts to arrange the tiles in different configurations, and tables to determine the amount of terrain on each tile. Caves are limited to chambers of one or two tiles, so are ideal for quick trips into the dark. The aim of this project was to try and create some flexible tiles for a relatively small budget. I set myself a limit of £100 to make at least four painted tiles, but am allowed to use some supplies I already have, like paint or glue. Any other materials had to be purchased.
1. DARK MATERIALS
Rather than just a list, I’ll go through my acquisitions. I picked up three packs of 12” square cork floor tiles, four tiles per pack from Amazon. These are available from a variety of suppliers, including discount stores and online. You want to try and find ones that are unsealed and use coarse cork chunks bonded together rather than sheets of cork. Mine were 8mm thick and the thicker you can get the better. I also picked up a pack of A3 black foam core to use as a base for the tiles. You could also use MDF, hardboard, foamed PVC (Foamex) or even cross laminated corrugated cardboard (two layers at 90 degrees to each other). The base is to provide some stability to the tiles, as they are a little fragile and bendy.
I also picked up a bag of lichen, some tufts, some fine green flock and some coarse sand. I grabbed a few aquarium plants from a huge bag of them I have, but you can also get these very economically
from discount stores. I already had plenty of scenery paints, but if you don’t then some cheap acrylics or tester pots of browns, tans and greys are required and can be easily sourced from discount stores. Finally, I already had a variety of glues including PVA, ModPodge and a hot glue gun. I grabbed my cutting mat, a sharp utility knife, a pair of pliers, a steel rule and a marker.
The plan is to use four of the cork tiles to make a selection of modular game tiles. Another four will be used to make some cave walls and the remaining four will be used to make some elevated platforms and rock piles. Two of the tiles will be plain, and two will feature a cut-out to match the dimensions for a small and wide chasm or river in Into the Dark. The wall sections will also be scaled to the dimensions for scenery in Into the Dark too. The texture of the coarse cork is great for both a cracked, rocky surface and when broken, gives a really good bare rock surface as well. The key is to lean into the granular nature of the tiles and try to avoid any straight edges.
2. STICK DOWN
The first step is to fix the four tiles to the foam core. My tiles were actually 300mm square, so slightly smaller than 12”, but close enough. A3 is 297mm x 440mm, so the cork tiles would have a tiny overlap on two edges, and would need a section trimmed away from a third edge. Most cork tiles come with an adhesive backing and that is going to be sufficient to secure them to the foam core. Be careful to align the edges as closely as you can, as peeling them off afterwards is not an option.
3. TRIM THE BASE
Once the tile is affixed you can trim off the excess. Be careful not to cut into the cork and, as ever, foam core is best cut in a number of slices with a sharp blade. Foam core will dull a sharp blade very quickly, so if it starts to catch or tear, switch to a new blade or sharpen the one you are using. For the two chasm tiles I drew out the rough outlines before I stuck them to the foam core, referring to the dimensions given in Into The Dark. I wanted two to be usable together, so the narrow one flares out to meet the wider one.
4. ROUGHING IT
I then used the craft knife to score the surface along the lines I had drawn/I wanted a rough edge to my chasm, so I didn’t cut all the way through. Instead, I then flexed the cork sheet using the scoring as a guide and snapped it along the grain of the cork chunks. This left the crumbly, jagged looking edge. I did this for both sides and then stuck the two pieces down onto the foam core, leaving the chasm between them. I did the same for the larger piece and then just trimmed the edges of the join between them you make sure the alignment was seamless. Keep the left over piece from the middle and any of the trimmed off parts as they will come in handy later.
5. I’LL HAVE A SANDWICH
With the four tiles now constructed I moved onto the cave wall sections. For this we are going to build them up in layers of two tiles sandwiched together. The glue backing on the tiles is very strong and when placed glue side to glue side you can get a double layer piece that is easy to use. Be careful when aligning the tiles, as, again, once stuck they do not want to come unstuck.
6. STACK ‘EM HIGH
The double layer of cork is now about 18mm thick. I’d like my walls to be higher than a 32mm figure, so by stacking up three of these double layers of cork I can get a wall that is around 54mm high. Into The Dark allows wall sections of up to 8 inches in length, so with my tile almost 12 inches square I decided on a mix of 8 inch and 4 inch walls, to allow for some variety. I divided
one double thick tile up with the marker pen, making the walls the width of my ruler for ease. This turned out to be around 1.3 inches, so gave me 9 wall widths per tile – perfect for stacks of 3.
I then followed the same process as I had with the rivers. I scored the cork then snapped it by bending. You need to be careful that the cork doesn’t separate along the join between the two sheets, but, again, try and follow the grain of the tile as much as possible to keep the rough edges.
7. RANDOM APPLICATION OF PLIERS
Once I had all the chunks cut out I set to work roughing up the edges with a pair of pliers. By using the pliers to bite, nibble and rip at the cork chunks I removed any straight edges or corners. You will sometimes find that the cork has separated along the plane of glue, leaving an exposed sticky, flat part. You can cover this up by using some of the chunks you have ripped off to stick onto it – especially good if you have a chunk with sticky side that you can stick on an exposed sticky section. You are looking for as much randomness as possible here, so rip and tear at the cork until all the straight edges have gone. The rougher the better. Again, keep all the bits you tear off as they make great ground cover and rocks for basing or patching up holes. Once you are happy with your cork briquettes it’s time to assemble them into walls. I used hot glue for this, but you could use PVA if you are happy to wait for the drying time. Just sandwich three of the layers together and give them a squeeze as the glue sets.
8. ASSEMBLY
If you have sections that are slightly different sizes it doesn’t matter too much. You can use wider sections near the base of the wall, and have a few bits jutting out. Once the sections are assembled it worth giving them another look-over and trimming up the cork with the pliers again if there are any new edges or parts that look too regular.
9. ROCK PILES
You can use the same technique with smaller sections of cork to make some scatter terrain too. I broke up the left over parts of the middle of the chasm sections and stacked them up using hot glue to make low piles of rock, rock pillars and a couple of larger platforms that figures could stand on.
10. ADDING 3D EFFECTS
The remaining six cork sheets were used to make larger platforms in much the same way as the walls, but just on a larger scale. Elevated platforms and multi-level caves are very much a feature of Skyrim, and Into the Dark allows for up to 6” square raised areas. I made up three corner pieces and three free standing raised areas from stacks of three layers of the doubled up sheets, hot glued again. You can vary the size of the layers; perhaps leave some of the upper surfaces bare on these stacks as it gives more interest and a more 3-d effect.
11. PILLARS
With the remaining off-cuts and leftovers from the raised platforms I made some more pillars and smaller platforms that can be placed on top of the raised areas to make even higher, multilevel caves – just right to FUS-RO-DAH an enemy off of! (I had to look that one up! Ed.)
With that, the basic construction was complete. The cork actually has a really nice natural colour and if you were looking for some desert mesas you could almost leave them in that natural state. I will cover the finishing and painting in another article next month, but I did experiment with using some Army Painter Strong Tone and Soft Tone dip on a couple of rock piles and got some pleasing results. I would imagine that it would be cheaper to use a commercial wood stain for large scenery pieces like this, but the Soft Tone especially gave a pleasing result. Next month I’ll look at the painting and decoration of the cave pieces. ■