Aquarium Pieces as Ruined Temples

An Aquarium piece from Blue Ribbon representing Cambodia's famous Bayon Temple at Angkor Wat

One of the perks of the long hours and hectic schedule of teaching in a public school is that I often receive gift cards for Christmas or at the end of the school year, as thanks from appreciative parents. I'd accumulated a few Amazon ones this year, so decided to finally pick up some aquarium pieces I'd seen others using and I had been wanting for a long time. Specifically, the Blue Ribbon Angkor Wat pieces. My Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago campaign will be set in a post-Apocalyptic Southeast Asia, so they will go great with the scratch-built temples I made for my Pulp games a couple years ago.

The ruined Bayon Temple looms out of the jungle, encrusted in vegetation

I was able to get three of them. Number one on my list was the Bayon Temple -- the famous ruin with the heads which look out in four directions. The piece is fairly large -- 9 1/2 inches tall by 6 inches wide. The first thing I noticed about these pieces is how well painted they actually are. I had assumed it would be a cheap, assembly line paint job and that I would be repainting them. Instead, I decided to keep the paint jobs as is.

I was surprised by how good the "out of the box" paint job was, so decided to keep it, adding only flocking

The only thing I did was re-flock the vegetation on them. In this temple's case, I added quite a bit. First, I painted select parts of the temple with white glue, then I flocked that glue with Woodland Scenics mixed green. Once that was dry, I blobbed on white glue on top of the flocking and applied darker clump foliage by Woodland Scenics. This gives it more of a three dimensional effect, as well as makes it look more encrusted in jungle vegetation.

A giant Khmer head rises up out of the jungle

 The next piece I purchased was a giant statue of a Khmer head. All of the vines you see are part of the terrain piece -- the only thing I did was to apply actual flocking to the piece. I thought the factory artists did a decent job of dry brushing the brown of the vines over a black base coat. I really like how this one has a tumbled column in front of it. The size is fairly massive, too -- 7 inches tall by about 6 inches wide. The back face of it (not shown), is simply carved into stone blocks. 

A close up of the statue, showing the clump foliage and flocking I applied.

I thought they did a good job creating this statue, realistically showing the seams in the stones that were used to create the massive face. They also got the thick, Khmer lips and drooping ear lobes right, as well. Good research and nice sculpting.

A Kneeling Buddha rises out of the jungle, a relic of lost civilizations

The third and final piece is a kneeling Buddha statue, holding a broken column in its cupped hands. Strangely, this one was already covered in the factory's poor attempt at flocking. They used a tall, green static grass that looked very odd and unrealistic. I painted over all of this with white glue and re-flocked it all. This piece definitely required the most reworking. However, it fits well with the Southeast Asian theme for my archipelago.

All in all, a great addition to my terrain for my games. I can't wait to see my table layed out with all of the temples! Should be fairly striking...