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Torech Ungol
BUILDING A GAMING TABLE OF SHELOB'S LAIR

One of the most terrifying events of The Return of The King film would have to be Frodo's mad dash through Shelob's Lair, a place of evil where even Sauron's Orcs fear to tread.

The face of Shelob

Within labyrinthine tunnels carved into the Mountains of Shadow, Shelob preys on anyone brave or foolish enough to wander within her reach. Fortunately for Frodo, his friendship with Sam proves harder to break than the tangled clutches of Shelob.

Not only can you use this table for the scenario that will be presented in White Dwarf 297, but you can also conjure up your own scenarios. What if the Orc patrol from White Dwarf's scenario She Hunts (WD 293) took place in Shelob's lair instead of among the rocky crags of Cirith Ungol? Another option is a "what if" scenario during the First Age of Middle-earth when the Elves hunted dread Ungoliant, the mother of Shelob. In short, this table gives you plenty of opportunity to use your imagination!

CONSTRUCTING THE FRAME

STEP ONE: To get the ball rolling, you are going to need a few tools and basic materials in order to build your table. Gather the items from the list found above.

STEP TWO: Decide on the table size you wish to build. The three choices listed here are probably the most common table sizes in the world of tabletop gaming. Click on one of the table sizes below to bring up a diagram of all the wood material you'll need to build a table of the selected size.

Choose Size Click to see guide Click to see guide Click to see guide

STEP THREE: Print out the diagram (to take with you), find a friend with a pickup truck (or some other means of lugging wood around), and hit the road for a Home Depot, 84 Lumber, Lowe's, Home Labyrinth, or other giant warehouse-type home improvement place.

STEP FOUR: Grab a large cart on the way in and locate a helpful employee in the lumber section. Show him your handy printout and nicely ask for some wood to be cut to the dimensions on the printout. The guy will help you pick out the wood and then cut it up for you. How cool is that? As long as you aren't making any ludicrous requests (like supplies for six tables at once), the employee should be happy to help.

STEP FIVE: Set up an area in which to work – you are going to need a bit of elbow room.

Click to EnlargeFirst things first: you need a large piece of 2 1/8"-thick insulation that is cut to fit the tabletop. Draw a rough set of guidelines onto the foam with a felt-tipped marker that follows this plan as closely as possible (the lines indicate where the tunnels go). When you're done, glue and screw the foam down to the wood so that the foam won't warp when you use the heat gun. Did I mention you need a heat gun? You can find this device (normally used for drying paint faster) at your local DIY store.

SPECIAL NOTE!

When using a heat gun and insulation foam, there are two very important things to remember:

1. Always melt foam in a well-ventilated area. Even better, do it outside if it's a nice day. Also, even with ample air flow, wear a respirator. The gases escaping from the melting foam are bad for you.

2. Wear some sort of sunblock if you are working outside on a sunny day. My pasty-white skin got blasted by UV rays and my arms looked like two cooked lobsters for about a week. That hurts!

Tunnels and Caves

Click to EnlargeOnce the foam is dry and you're sure it's secured to the frame, you can bring the heat gun to bear. Keep the nozzle of the gun perpendicular to the foam and melt great swaths in the foam's surface along the lines you marked. With each pass of the heat gun, you'll find strands of melted foam burning their way down through the pink stuff. Instant spider webs!

Click to EnlargeBy allowing the heat gun to linger over one place, you can carve out big chambers and widen corridors. Leave the gun there long enough and you can expose the wood "floor" of the cave, which can be covered up later with wood glue and sand.

With only a few passes of the heat gun, you can make undulating tunnels with ease. These melted tunnels usually produce the best web texture.

Corroded Rock

Click to EnlargeIn Houghton Mifflin's The Art of the Return of The King, there were quite a few illustrations and sketches of Shelob's Lair. These rendering suggest that her lair was corroded or pitted as if her evil actually ate away at the stone around her. To represent this effect, take a soldering tool and melt shallow holes of varying diameters in the cave walls.

Touching up the Seams

Click to EnlargeYou probably found, like I did, that you could only cover the board surface with several adjacent sheets of foam. Unfortunately, the superheated air from the heat gun travels down these seams and melts the edges. Use spackle to patch these gaps as well as any holes left behind when the screws were put in to secure the foam.

Building Cocoons (a.k.a. Shelob's Supper)

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STEP ONE:

With a fresh blade for your modelling knife, cut out small rectangles of foam. The optimal size (when compared to a Mordor Orc) is 1/8" tall x 1/2" wide x 1/2" deep. Be very careful when using modelling knives, as they are very sharp.

STEP TWO:

Shave the foam rectangle into a roughly egg-shaped form with your knife. Watch your fingers.

STEP THREE:

Push floral wire through the foam. Allow approximately 1" to protrude from the "back" of the cocoon. This bit will act as an anchor during Step 7.

STEP FOUR:

Wind floral wire around the cocoon to simulate thicker, stronger strands of webbing.

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STEP FIVE:

Cut the floral wire once the cocoon has been covered to your liking. Bend the end of the wire back upon itself and push it into the foam and hide it among the rest of the wire wrapping.

STEP SIX:

Straighten the 1" anchor wire on your assembled cocoon.

STEP SEVEN:

Push the cocoon's anchor wire into the foam cave walls. Try bunching a few cocoons for variety.

STEP EIGHT:

Finally, use more strands of floral wire to "strap" the cocoons to the tunnel walls.


Making Web Markers

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STEP ONE:

First, with a 25mm round base and a pin vise in hand, drill two holes near the centre of the base approximately 1 cm away from one another. Cut a length of wire to about 6". Wrap this wire around a bottle of GW white glue or another object of similar girth. Bend the excess wire at right angles to the wire hoop. Cut off any extra wire (watch your eyes!). Insert the tabs into the holes in the base and dab a drop of superglue on each tab to secure them.

STEP TWO:

Once the superglue has dried, take a glue gun set to the lowest heat setting and apply a ring of hot glue to the wire. Now, run thin strands of glue back and forth across the width of the hoop. Apply glue to both sides of the wire. Your web markers can be as sparse (centre image) or as dense (right image) as you like.

STEP THREE:

Once the hot glue has dried (it won't take long at all), prime your webs with White Spray Primer. After the primer has dried, paint the base with Chaos Black paint.

Next: Painting the Table.

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Copyright © Games Workshop Limited 2008 excepting all materials pertaining to the New Line theatrical productions: The Watcher logo, The Fellowship of the Ring; The Two Towers; and The Return of The King which are © MMVIII New Line Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Lord of The Rings, The Fellowship of The Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of The King and the names of the characters, items, events and places therein are trademarks of The Saul Zaentz Company d/b/a Tolkien Enterprises under license to New Line Productions, Inc. and Games Workshop Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo, Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 device are either ®, TM and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2000-2008, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All Rights Reserved.




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