A while back I had the need for some sacred stones for both Frostgrave and Kings of War: Vanguard. I decided to make two, a rune engraved stone block, and a more elegant obsidian monolith.

As with most of my projects I started with one of my favourite materials, XPS foam. For the stone block, I roughly cut a piece to about the right size I wanted. The good thing about modeling rock is that you don’t need to care too much about the shape and you can be as rough as you like. I once did some image googling to get a better idea of what real rock looks like, and I came to the conclusion that real rock can look like anything you want to imagine. I then added some runes to the stone block by scoring them with a hobby scalpel, and then widening the scoring with a ball point pen tip.

For the monolith, I warmed up my hot wire cutter, and carved out a precise rectangular shape. That was pretty much it for the stones themselves, they were quite simple.

I glued the stone block onto a piece of thick card and used Spakfilla to build up the base. For the monolith I went for a paved base. I rolled out a thin piece of polymer clay and used a textured roller to imprint a pavement texture. Twenty minutes in the oven firmed up the clay and I cut a piece of it out, glued that to a thick piece of card. I then glued the monolith on top of the hardened clay.

Now it was on to painting. I based the stone block in a  medium grey and then drybrushed it with a light grey. To try to achieve the flaming runes effect, I started by painting the inside of the runes yellow. Then I painted immediately around the runes in a 50/50 mix of yellow and red. I followed this up by painting the area around that with plain red, thinning the paint out at the very edges. Its not the best “glow” effect, but it was simple. I painted the base medium brown followed by drybrushing it light brown. Then I soaked the entire piece in a homemade black wash. The black wash pulls all the colours together. If you’re trying this for yourself, don’t be concerned if your base coat or drybrush looks too bright or contrasts with the surrounding colours. The black wash will level it all out. I then flocked the base with mostly static grass, and a bit of gravel and grass tufts.

The monolith itself was simply painted black. I painted the entire paved base a medium grey. I then picked out a few of the pavement pieces with a mix of grey and brown, and some others with a mix of grey and tan. I then drowned the base in a black wash.

This was a quick and simple “feel good” project. Its nice to see it come together so fast. But there is plenty of scope to get much more creative with the runes and stone texture, and with whatever basing suits your gaming style.