Making Mini Terrain

I was so excited when I got my Bones 4 Kickstarter rewards from Reaper Miniatures; so many amazing miniatures!  I picked out 12 miniatures for a batch run, but when I made plans to attach them to a pedestal, I realized that several of these miniatures did not come with a base attached.  The Bones 4 package included some simple plastic bases, and I glued these minis to the plastic discs, but the minis looked out of place on the flat featureless disc, like they're sitting on someone's kitchen countertop rather than a dungeon.

It's possible to buy various styles of cast resin miniature bases, or laser-cut plywood miniature bases.  They look good, but they are pricey, I'm kind of cheap, and I don't want the base to be so nice that it distracts from the miniature.

Tiny Piece of Terrain

I decided to look into how to make a tiny scrap of terrain surface for the base.  I've tried gluing sand to the base after attaching the mini, but it doesn't work so well; the tiny feet get swallowed in the layer of sand and glue.  You gotta put the terrain down first.  Terrain is typically somewhat chaotic and amorphous, and this stuff needs to stick to the base and the mini. 

Don't fight forces, use them.

-- Richard Buckminster Fuller

If you've ever used Gorilla Glue, you've probaly made a mess with it.  Gorilla Glue is kind of a cross between varnish and expanding foam.  Like a good varnish, it's main ingredient is tough polyurethane; but it cures using airborne moisture and it turns into a foam, bulking up like a foam blob until it is several times its original size, thereby expanding into the gap you're gluing.  It goes on looking like maple syrup, but it foams into hard yellow spittle and makes a mess. 

It occurs to me that the randomness of this glue could provide me with the randomness I need to make convincing terrain.  But how random is it?  How big will it foam up?  I decided to experiment with white Gorilla Glue, sand, and gravel. 

Experiments

I thoroughly washed an old food package lid, drew 1-inch circles on the back with a Sharpie, and numbered them 1 through 7. 
In each circle, I put a drop of white Gorilla Glue. 
In circle 1, I left the drop in the center of the circle.
In circles 2 through 7, I smeared the drop around to basically cover the whole circle.
In circle 3, I sprinkled sand on the glue.  The sand came out of a 50-pound bag I bought at a hardware store, and it has some tiny bits of gravel mixed in. 
In circle 4, I sprinkled gravel on the glue.
In circle 5, I sprinkled gravel on the glue, then poured on sand to fill the gaps.
In circle 6, I let the glue foam up, then I mixed sand into the sticky glue to form a gritty paste.
In circle 7, I let the glue foam up, then I mixed gravel into the sticky glue.
I devised some of these experiments to prevent something I call the "chocolate chip cookie" effect, wherein glue foams around pieces of gravel, resembling the way cookie dough rises around chocolate chips; this is unlike the way rocks appear on the ground, poking up through dirt which washes away from the rock. 

Here I let the glue cure overnight, and shook the excess sand and gravel off it.  In circle 1, you can see the glue in circle 1 hardened on the outside, then foamed and expanded through a hole, kind of like a volcanic ejection.  In most of the other circles, you can see the glue has neatly foamed to resemble white spittle, where it is not mixed with sand.

Here I sprayed white primer on the terrain.  #4 and #7 have a little of the chocolate chip cookie effect.  Honestly, though, all of them (except for #1) look like believable terrain.

Here I painted #2 through #7 with dirt- and rock-colored paint.  They mostly look believable, but #3 looks the nicest; you can see there is only a little gravel on #3, so I suspect that a few pieces of "accent" gravel provide decent contrast with the appearance of dirt and sand from the other experiments.  It could also be a psychological effect wherein my mind doesn't like the more gravelly sections because they look too rocky and irregular to walk on without twisting my ankle. 

Conclusions

A little gravel goes a long way, but in general the sand on the glue works pretty well. 

But even if you wind up with terrain that REALLY looks like a chocolate chip cookie, there's at least 1 monster for whom you have the perfect terrain!

He doesn't want to eat your adventurers, he wants their rations.