Welcome to the largest terrain project I’ve ever undertaken. This build is creates a fully modular dungeon crawler, intended for Dungeons and Dragons games but I’m also keen to see other systems where it might fit.

This is all built using kits from the Dungeons and Lasers Kickstarters by Archon Studio. These walls and floors are versatile enough to be built as rooms or corridors so they’re endlessly configurable. The system is quick and easy to use (and drastically cheaper than some of the big names in D&D terrain). Floors are held together by straight connectors while walls attach using single connectors. This stuff is all hard plastic too, so it’s robust and should withstand even the most careless users.

The Core

Since there’s a whole lot of terrain to get through, painting had to be a quick and simple affair, so I’m making widespread use of washing, drybrushing, and overbrushing. The core set forms the bulk of the dungeon. It connects rooms via corridors and archways, or can be used to create rooms in their own right. To paint, I primed with Mechanicus Standard Grey, washed all over with Agrax Earthshade, overbrushed with Dark Reaper, and drybrushed with Fenrisian Grey. This gives a layered blue-grey effect. Ideal for all the stonework.

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Hall of Heroes

With a dwarven feel to it, the outstanding features of the Hall of Heroes has to be those runes. For extra colour, and to add a bit of magic to the dungeon, I wanted them to glow. Orange fit the bill perfectly. The effect was achieved by successive layers of drybrushing; darker on the outside, getting brighter closer to the centre. The outside was done with GW Troll Slayer Orange while the inside is GW Fire Dragon Bright. This took multiple layers of both paints, starting with a wide area, and gradually drybrushing smaller areas within it. To finish the effect, a layer of GW Flash Gitz Yellow was painted directly into the centre of the runes.

The remainder of the walls and floor use much the same method as the core set above, with the exception of the mustard-coloured patterns. These were done with Vallejo Heavy Goldbrown with a wash of GW Agrax Earthshade in any recesses.

Cursed Cathedral

Probably my favourite of all the rooms (so much that I ordered a second set of this in the latest Kickstarter) is the Cursed Cathedral. This room seemed perfect to house cultists and an evil priest reading some dread sermon. I pictured the below setup as an encounter where the cultists are performing a resurrection rite on the prone figure atop the table. It’s a race against time to stop the ceremony before the figure awakens and joins the fight.

While the walls follow the same stone recipe as the core set, the window shutters are painted with GW Rhinox Hide, washed all over with GW Agrax Earthshade, and drybrushed with GW XV 88. The floor uses a base coat of GW Celestra Grey, washed with GW Agrax Earthshade, overbrushed with GW Celestra Grey, then drybrushed with GW Ulthuan Grey. The red sections are all GW Mephiston Red.

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Dwarven Mine

I wasn’t sure about this room initially, but it’s turned out to be one of my favourites. The extra colour makes it stand out from the rest of the dungeon. I thought this would be a great place for a cave in with scattered mining equipment left behind as the miners fled something terrible they disturbed in the depths.

The wood follows the same recipe as the shutters in the Cursed Cathedral while the dusty floor is Vallejo Earth, washed with Agrax Earthshade (I used a whole lot of this stuff in this project), then drybrushed with Vallejo Earth and GW Ushabti Bone.

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The Finished Dungeon

In all its glory, we have a fully playable dungeon which is a mere basic representation of what this kit can do. With it being so modular, you need never play the same layout twice. More corridors, bigger rooms; it’s all possible.

While this is more than serviceable for dozens of games, the next step is to wait for Dungeons and Lasers III to ship. I grabbed a few extra rooms, along with a sewers complex to create a bigger dungeon and to offer more configuration options. As part of that, I added some roofs to my pledge to see whether some of these rooms might work as standalone buildings in other tabletop wargames. The Cursed Cathedral should fit right into Warhammer 40k.

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