With some polystyrene blocks from eBay (2 foot by 2 foot by 1 inch) as well as a cheap bit of MDF that I had cut to 1 foot by 1 foot I now have lots of building materials for super cheap scenery.
The first thing I wanted to make was a standing circle of bit stones, a megalithic structure. I worked out a general shape and set to cutting...
Here it is glued together and based with my customary sand sprinkling. (In the background you can see my paper sketch.) The keys for me were that I wanted it to be a decent obstacle/defensive position. To that end there are two large entrances in the outer circle, and only one in the inner circle. The gaps between the uprights are too narrow to squeeze through, but will still allow archers to shoot out. The "path" for want of a better word is wide enough for a cavalry base to fit, so only largish monsters won't be able to fit. A flying creature can land in the center.
I covered it with several layers of watered down glue and then sprayed it black. Unfortunately I didn't do a very good job of glue coverage and I had a LOT of disintegrating from the spray. Fortunately it's meant to look like weathered rock so I guess it's not so bad.
Here we are after one heavy drybrush of dark grey. I used really cheap art paint for this and just mixed black and white together.
And here we are after several layers of grey. One dark, one medium, one light. This is outside so the lighting is a bit better!
And the top-down view...
I gave it a bit of a black wash on just some bits to tone it down and give a bit of definition to it. Then Buhrdur decided to make it his camp for the night and some Haradrim decided that he was desecrating a sacred structure...
From down low you can see that the stones tower nicely, but not too high - I still wanted to easily be able to move my troops around in there!
And here you can see one of the many opportunities that archers will be able to take.
With many people worried about the so-called archery nerf I thought that something like this might be a good way of showing that some terrain can make a bit of a difference. The outside ring should be easily climbable too, giving an archer a nice view of the surrounds.
So there you go, one step-pyramid and one henge of stones... whatever will come next?