Bring Out Yer Dead! : Modular Graveyard

A while back I ordered some resin headstones from TT Combat.  At the time I was planning to use them for basing but after I built the camp sites from the same manufacturer I reconsidered and made them up as circular terrain pieces.

Nobody misses MOO 3

The build was very simple.  First off I found some old cds I had kicking around.  I placed two rows of three headstones on each.  I felt that the look of the two rows was a decent representation of a graveyard, and allowed models to move through them easily.  The stones were attached with super glue, and the hole in the center of the disc was covered with a plastic insert I cut from thin styrene.

level ground suits a cemetary and makes mini placement easier.

Next, I painted a thin layer of glue across the the surface of each of the six discs.  I didn't bother with model paste or anything to build up the groundwork.  Graveyards are usually heavily landscaped so it was fine for the earth to be level.  Once the bases dried they were primed.

The paint process was a standard three layer drybrush with a darker brown basecoat, a warm brown and an ivory.  For terrain I prefer using craft paint rather than wasting hobby paint and it did the job fine.  After the ground was painted I painted the stones in three different grey tones.  I mixed them up a bit across the 6 bases in an attempt to keep them visually interesting.  With everything painted I got out the garbage brush, applied another layer of glue to the base, and flocked it with static grass.

The hardest part of the project was waiting for glue and paint to dry between stages.  In spite of an easy execution these simple modules can bring a lot to the appearance of a battlefield.  The very simplicity makes the graveyard adaptable and appropriate to multiple genres.  While working on my undead army for Age of Sigmar I have been thinking about building grave markers, but these have more utility.  At some point I will make the grave markers but they will be more over the top with skeletons crawling from the earth and Warhammer iconography.  Simplicity meant versatility.  These stones could work in periods from 19th century right up to now and be unassuming enough they will fit the part.  In this case I think more is less and hope to create more projects like this.  As an afterthought I might make up a sleeve for the modules to store them in stacked.