A nice idea and a moment of madness comes to us all and coupled with a nice set of blinkers means your only going in one direction. Mine was a bloody big mountain.

Terrain building was something I had never taken much notice of until I was chatting to a friend who though it would be brilliant if we could fight fantasy battles around a Dwarven stronghold, hence the "nice idea". A few sketches later and the acquisition of some polystyrene sheets saw me becoming the chump caught up in a 3 month "moment of madness". So with pick axe and crampons at the ready I set off after my mountain.

WARNING: Mountains = Madness

If you are mad enough to attempt this I must warn you it is a time consuming and costly task, but once that will inspire awe and admiration once completed; the choice is years.

Disposable craft knife/ or bread knife (kids get a adult to help out here)

A couple of days later when the base was dried I could then start work on the actual mountain. This is the simple part in which you just cut the polystyrene to a similar size as to the one on the base and glue it on. However you must take into account any tunnels or gates that you may want to place and cut out areas to support this fact. These can be as wide and deep as you like and it is a good idea to lay your canons and crew out how you would like them to sit in the mountain and then draw around them so you can cut out enough room for them all to fit.

For added stability each time that you glue a layer of polystyrene down drive kebab sticks through them in several places, giving vertical as well as horizontal strength to the structure. This process of gluing layers can be repeated until you reach a satisfactory height. I stopped at a mere 3ft!

To create overhangs you can simply glue rounded mounds of polystyrene to the side of the mountain again using kebab sticks for support, whilst the slopes are created by bevelling (i.e. curving) the edges of the polystyrene inwards and continuing this process on the following layers as you move up. Once all this is dried up smooth them down with sand removing any signs of where the polystyrene joins.

At this stage the Dwarven gate must be considered ( if you wish to use one at all) and how its is to be attached, I personally liked the Snap Dragon resin Dwarven gate, and so used that one, but you could quite easily make your own from balsa wood and plastic card.

Firstly the gate was painted and then it was glued into place with PVA and any gaps filled with all purpose filler (Pollyfilla in this case) again the whole thing was put aside and left to dry. Once this was dried I sanded the filler down and then used Milliput to make smaller rocks around the edges of the gate until it looked flush up and part of the mountain, then left to dry and then covered in PVA again for extra bonding and strength.

A nice touch suggested to me was the fact that mountainsides had crags and crevasses where erosion naturally takes place, so out came the knife and a battle commenced with the monster to create said features. Basically it involved cutting "V" shaped gashes into the mountain side and then sanding down to fit smoothly in, however so conformity should be kept making the crevasses flow down the mountain side.

Hopefully by now you should have a big mass of polystyrene in the shape of a mountain with a gate sat in the middle. You are now ready for the real fun part (ha ha ha!) in which a rock effect must now be achieved and this is where the PVA and toilet roll come in.

First mix some PVA with water (about 2 parts water for 1 of PVA) and then take a strip of toilet paper and soak it in the glue. Then place it on the mountain and dab it down with a wet brush. Repeat this until the mountain is covered and then leave to dry totally.

By now you must be asking ‘ Why am I doing this?’ and my reply is that the toilet paper soaks up the glue when drying and wrinkles giving a good rocky like texture. I must recommend at least 2 coats like this as it makes sure you do not miss any areas and also adds a lot of strength generally to the structure binding it together, but do not splatter your gate with glue, try to cover it up with a plastic bag and some tape.

The choice of colour is now up to you but I shall describe the techniques I used. Firstly I must recommend manufactured textured paint, which is basically paint with sand in it, however it is designed for exteriors and so when used on terrain it seals and protects better than acrylic or emulsion.

As a base colour the mountain was given three coats of textured black paint and then dry-brushed with dark brown again textured using a 2" brush (the cheaper the better for this purpose!). Dry brushing is a very simple technique in which you load your brush with paint and then bush it back and forth over a cloth until it leaves only a thin trace of the paint on the cloth, and then you quickly brush back and forth over the area you wish to highlight using a flicking motion of the wrist. All the detail will then be picked out which in this case is the wrinkles in the toilet paper and the sand in the paint. White was then added three times and again the mountain was dry brushed bringing the areas of light and darkness out. Patches of green where then painted on the overhang and around the base and dry brushed up with yellow, and hey presto one finished Dwarven stronghold. Or is it?

I would just like to say thanks to Will Riley and Mark ‘the Scouse’ for all their help and the to crew who help us lug this around the country to game shows.

Craig.