“Remember what Bilbo used to say: It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
Well, when I stepped out onto the road to doing this, I had no idea where I would be swept off to.
What started as an idea of doing Balin's expedition to retake Moria (inspired by seeing this: http://old.tabletop-hdr.de/en/armies/ar ... s-dwarves/ ) has led me to buying more figures, making custom molds and using I don't know how much plaster of paris.
I had some dwarves and the moria goblins and the Mines of Moria set but I never really liked the columns in that set. I bought the Moria mold from Keebler Studios ( http://keeblerstudios.com/?product=moria-mold ) as I knew I wanted to work in plaster, as that is the medium I know best. I looked at some other molds he makes but thought I would just start out with the Moria one. I added some dwarf heads from Warhammer Fantasy to the columns and bought some fantasy coins to make some distinctive floor molds.
I bought some Dwarf Rangers, Murin and Drar, Dain and Balin and a standard bearer from Ebay and GW to round out my dwarves. And some Moria Goblin Commanders for the goblins. My niece asked where the Balrog was so bought one of those and since I had gotten one Cave Troll cheap I had to buy another as they look best in threes.
I knew I wanted to build something that resembled a dwarf hold but not reproduce what was in the movies. It had to be where I could rearrange the pieces and be storable. The scenario I came up with is to have a chamber hidden in Moria that held Durin's Axe that Balin needed to recover to retake Moria.
My table that I would turn into Durin's Chamber is an old 2ft by 3ft WWII map table I have in my game room.
I added a piece of vinyl on top of the glass as I found out dropping a piece of plaster from even a few inches up would break or shatter the plaster.
For the background I took a larger roll of shaper sheet and did a rudimentary cave wall.
My initial thought was to have a flat floor with a hallway of columns leading to Durin's statue and axe.
I found this too boring and decided to add some elevation at one end. I took a piece of insulation board I had, cut into it and used it as a raised platform. This led to making a wall to front the board. Which led to another scenario of having to protect Flói Stonehand, Loremaster of Moria while he did the incantation of protecting the Chamber. So I had to buy some Grimhammers.
Still not completely happy with the greyness of it all, I added a bridge and a canal of lava. Later I will build some canal walls.
In case the Dwarves get too cocky about taking the hall, I have some ceilings to drop onto the board.
At some point I will build more large columns, and a new style of smaller columns. As it is now, I need to paint my dwarves and goblins, etc and actually use the board for a battle.
I can also use the table for smaller scenes such as the scenarios in the Mines of Moria set.
Sorry for the length of this post but it has been quite a journey to build this, and I wanted to share some of the thought process that went into it and the results. I think it was worth it.
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