Scratch-built Treasure Markers

"My precious..."

I've recently been focused on trying to put together very low cost terrain for Frostgrave (or other skirmish games). Naturally, the focus has been on buildings because having lots of terrain seems essential to the experience, but you also need treasure markers. If you aren't familiar with Frostgrave, the premise is that each player has a small warband of up to 10 models, and you are fighting in an abandoned city to discover treasure, potions or other magical items.

Of course, a coin, or dice or anything else can be used to indicate where the treasure is on the gameboard, but wouldn't it be better to have something that looks like treasure (at least a little bit?)

With that in mind I headed over to one of my local dollar stores, and returned armed with a variety of supplies.

Supplies, supplies!

• shiny hologram paper (comes in various colours, but this pack comes with gold!)
• 6 pill boxes for keeping your meds in.
• Nail art ornaments. They look like pearls or gems.
• Pack of white beads.
• Diamond earrings (These didn't work in the end as I couldn't pry the diamonds out.)

This cost around US $9.00 (of which I ended up using about $6.00)

Making the Sarcophagi

The first thing I needed to do was make the containers, and in the end, I thought that these would be made of stone, rather than wood. The shape of the pill boxes lent themselves to looking like a tomb or sarcophagus.

1. Adding foam core.

1. Add foam core. 

I cut up some old red packing foam to match the shape of the pill boxes. This foam comes in model blister packs - always keep it! The gold paper will lie on top of this, so part of the trick is to cut the foam to the right depth. I wanted my sarcophagi to be almost full, so I made the foam about 5/6 the depth of the box.

2. Accessorize your sarcophagus

2. Accessorize your Sarcophagus.

Time to raid my Warhammer Fantasy and 40K bitz box! I managed to find some items that would spice up the pill box. Scrolls, a giant rat, taken from a Skaven Plague monk sprue, a helmet from an Empire knight, assorted skulls, chains, and swords etc. These were attached with super glue.

3. Undercoat.

I used grey, but I also then inserted the foam and used Chaos Black around the edges. This is to hide the red foam if I can't get the gold paper to fit exactly.

Marble with gloss varnish

Marble without varnish

4. Painting.

I had never tried to paint marble before, but I watched a few YouTube videos and had a go! You'll find plenty of advice about painting marble in different colours, and I thought it would be fun to try green marble as well as white/ grey. After painting, I applied GW gloss varnish to some of the models but realized that I actually preferred the matt look.

5. Fill with Treasure!

After painting was complete, I added the "treasure". This was done by cutting out the gold "hologram" paper to shape, then gluing it on top of the foam. Finally, I added various gems, necklaces and pearls from the nail art kits. These were glued in place using PVA glue, which then dried clear.

Voila!