Today we have the first proper post on a little scenery project I’ve been planning and slowly working on for some time – a trope-laden fantasy cemetery. Or graveyard for those who prefer that term.

“Viking” Themed Graves.

Over a year ago, I wrote up a small scenery post around some Uruk-hai ladders and an old metal grave that I’d finally done something with and actually finished. Sometime following that, I also found a literal bundle of additional Uruk-Hai ladders, Anyhow, in the comments, I mused about making some more, since it felt like creating more would be incredibly easy, and so inspired by Alex, IRO and especially D&B, I put together a pair of additional “grave bases”, using some Renedra Gravestones as the base.

That original metal-cast grave that inspired the creation and form of these graves, flanked by Neferata and Bastet.

Of course, the wider graveyard project that these will be part of only exists because of the inspiration provided by Cheetor’s St Cranium’s Cemetary. If not for that post and it’s followup batreps, I’d simply have had the various Grendel resin bits that I’d picked up in the 1990’s and they’d provide some scatter terrain, or be clustered together and that would be that.

A slightly more fancy grave.

This little experiment worked well. I used PVA initially to glue down the sand, and then a sample of a liquid adhesive created by Kibo called “Area 52” in order to firmly set the sand. I’ve been using it on a lot of my scenic bases lately, and I find it works really nicely when you want to build up impressions using sand while still giving a lot of control. The initial plan was just to create two, but since it was simple and easy enough I decided to put together an additional ten, with a mix of single and double graves, as well as one double-wide.

“Crusader” Themed Graves.

I’ve kept on with the “dark brown earth” theme that I’ve been using for most of my models since the late 80’s. I originally started with the dark brown because I wanted to figure out a type of base that worked both for normal games of 40k as well as Space Hulk, as the green-based terminators I used back then looked too conspicuous on the SH tiles. I figured that dark brown was kind of non-specific and generic enough to work for scorched earth or muddy ground while being unobtrusive and dark enough to work for Space Hulk.

“Generic” Graves.

I made a conscious effort with the painted colours on the first two bases to allow them to work reasonably well as generic scenery and also fit in specifically with the Undead Army. I also chose to decorate these bases with both rich green grass and red flowers for the same reasons as well as a wry wink to the soil being rich for growth. The flowers were placed again to be able to be read as placed or wild growth.

“Fantasy” themed Graves.

I tried to come up with (sort-of) broad themes for them as well. Several of the headstones that feature Christian crosses were decorated with shields painted with Templar symbols (except for the Maltese cross – that bit’s a transfer!) Others are Viking themed, Norman themes and a couple are more explicitly fantasy themed. I figure while I’m sure they’re very much wrong in terms of actual historically accurate viking or templar graves, they would hopefully still look reasonable enough to use in games of Saga/Crescent and Cross/etc if need be. And of course, in fantasy games – anything goes!

Norman, is that you?

Gravestones by Grendel. Painted many moons ago.

These small graves have also been shown previously. I’ve since glued some sand down over the dodgily-sculpted “dirt” they originally had, and also added some flowers and grass

Reaper Bones Bat Swarms (with their gravestones).

The Cemetery, as laid out for a not-so-recent game.

I’ve still got plenty more tombstones to work with, and have a Hirst Arts set or two on “the list” of things to buy. The two Garden of Morr sets I’ve got might finally get built this summer, depending on what else I still need to finish and get out of the way, along with the two Bones III Graveyard Expansion sets I got from Reaper. The graveyard is a fun little project, but definitely a slow burn.