My original take on dungeon tiles used cork tiles that I had picked up in the office supply section of my local mega-mart. They looked OK but didn’t have the pop and just plain cool factor that the ones that I recently made out of XPS. But that left me with a bunch of cork tiles so I had to think about what I wanted to do with them. And then the idea struck me. I’d use them to make interesting terrain hazards.

There’s a couple of tricks to use these things. Most importantly they warp very easily. With some research and trial and error, the easiest way around this is pretty simple. Whatever you do to one side, do the same thing to the other side. So paint on one side. Paint on the other side. Any undercoat? Yep do it on both sides. They also have a tendency to crumble. So you’ll want to add some protective coating. And finally, if you just start painting them then they will absorb a lot of paint.

For these, I decided to go with easiest and possibly the cheapest route I could. For an undercoating and a little protection, I used plain old Modge Podge. That’s no black paint. Just Modge Podge. Then did my painting and did another coat of Modge Podge. They are little glossy but I think that’s OK and they are fairly durable. If you wanted, you could use PVA glue or even polychrylic on these.

Each tile is double sided so there’s one hazard on each side. I decided to do them sort of in matched pairs: Fire/Water; Pit/Slime or Acid. I did two 4×4 tiles and four 2×6 tiles. I’ve got more cork sitting around so chances are I’ll be making more.