Tutorial How to make your own snake-pit

[Warden]

Does the Great Plan and sitting around waiting for the Slann to wake up get you down?

Are you concerned about the skaven coming up from the Under-Empire and taking over the surface world?

Do you wish you had a place where you could sacrifice those rats you captured during your last skaven campaign?


Well rejoice and sing praises to the serpent god my fellow Lizards , because now you can build a snake-pit of your very own! Sing praises to Sotek my friends!



Step 1: Assemble your materials and tools.

- Some foam board from a hobby store (up to a ½ to a whole cm thick at most)

- Soft foam sheets (1 or 2 mm thick)

- A toilet-paper or paper-towel roll (with all the paper gone of course)

- Some clay or green stuff

- Glue, both PVA and whatever you use for minis

- An exacto-knife

- Pair of scissors

- Some sand and basing stuff like plastic plants


Step 2: Build the base structure. Since we are building a snake pit we need to build the structure the pit will be in. Cut yourself two pieces of 6x12 inch long pieces of foam board, along with four sides. In the end you will have six pieces of foam board roughly these dimensions:

- Top and Base- 2x (6x12 inches)

- Short Sides- 2x (4x6 inches)

- Long Sides- 2x (4x12 inches)

These will form the general shape outside the pit. Glue together with PVA glue, but DO NOT glue the top on just yet.


Step 3: Build the pit. Cut a piece of toilet-paper or paper-towel roll so you have a tube 4 inches long. Using a pencil, draw a circle on the top foam board section and cut out a hole (remember how we didn’t glue the top on yet?). This will be the “mouth” of the pit.

Once you have made a hole in the foam board, glue the roll to it. Then you can assemble the box itself, which will look roughly like this (minus the doo-dads, they come later):

 

[Warden]

Step 4: Now that your pit is built, we can make the snakes!

Use green stuff or clay if you like. I have a ton of old oven-burn clay that I periodically turn into snakes in basing my minis or my jungle swarms. I made a bunch just for this.





While you are on this step, remember that piece we cut out of the top foam board? I hope you didn’t throw it out! You can now base it with sand, cuz this is where the snakes are going to go. Adding skulls or rat skeletons for the snakes to crawl on gets you bonus points. JUST MAKE SURE before you glue anything to this round piece, make sure it actually would fit down the roll/pit first or else you may have to cut it again to ensure it fits.

ALTERNATIVELY you could also use some of the snakes GW has put out for the lizardmen in the past, such as in the cold-one cavalry set, or in the bastiladon set. Or even those old jungle swarms!


Step 5: This is the sandy and decoration phase. I always add sand/rocks to my base before I paint them, easy step to do now before we go to town on this structure.



You can also use those soft foam pieces to add extra “bling” to your snake pit and make it look like less of a box. I normally add strips to each corner. In this case, I also added some “rocks” to make it look like a rounded fire-pit almost at the top.

EXTRA: If you have a way to make yourself tiny glyphs, make Sotek happy by adding them at the rounded edge of the snake pit. I used some resin-cast pieces for a drink coaster I bought in Tulum, Mexico on a trip. Glyphs came out great.


Step 6: Paint your snakes. I realized it would be way easier to paint the snakes BEFORE I dropped them into the pit. Here is what I came up with, same color scheme as my custom jungle swarms:




Step 7: Paint the pit! And all the rest of the structure. I used apple-barrel and craft paints for the whole thing. For the stone I would stick to a light-ish gray, and add highlights/details as you see fit. Of course sand can be painted brown, and plenty of other little green-or-brown splotches can be added for extra jungle awesomeness.



Also to go the extra mile, add jungle plants/little bits of foam to the structure.


Step 8: Glue the snakes in the pit! Pretty simple, just make sure the snakes are on top.




Step 9: Profit. Just kidding, rejoice and praise sotek, conduct ratmen sacrifices to your hearts content because your snake pit is done.



Continue to do great things in the name of Sotek my brethren! Hope you enjoyed this short tutorial.

(LINK to my hobby blog for moar WIP photos)

 

[Crowsfoot]

You can never have too many snakes!!

 

[Warden]

You can never have too many snakes!!

Quite true. Always a good addition, whether its on a mini's base, a jungle swarm, or terrain piece!

 

[Burwinkelito]

You can never have too many snakes!!

Indeed