I recently started playing Gloomhaven, which has me hooked. As with any tabletop game I play, I thought it would be fun to build some terrain for it and help make each game a bit more visually interesting. A simple build to begin with are the damage traps. The Gloomhaven token for damage traps depicts sharpened stakes protruding from a dirt mound, so that was my goal, and a quick flick through the scenario book showed that I would need a maximum of 6 to cover any scenario.

I started by making some sharpened stakes using toothpicks cut to roughly 1cm – 1.5cm lengths. Then I sharpened one end of each piece with a blade. I used some air-drying clay to make small mounds about one inch in diameter.

The next step was to push the stakes into the clay. Before doing this, I dipped the base of each toothpick into PVA glue to ensure a strong hold.

For me, about nine stakes gave good coverage for each piece, and I went ahead and made a bunch of these at once.

Where I live (wintery Melbourne), it takes a good 2  days for air-drying clay to fully dry. Once they were dry, I gave them a spray undercoat and painted the bases a dark brown. This was followed by a light brown dry brush, and then a brown wash. The stakes were painted with a medium brown for the shafts, and a light brown / tan for the pointy bits. I followed this up with a brown wash, and then a cream dry brush.

As usual, my painting left a bit to be desired, but it was good enough. For a bit more interest I played around with some blood stains and plastic skulls.