Terrain- Rocky Mountain High…..

Since I’ve been in the throes of the dreaded Painter’s Block, I’ve tried to drag myself out of it by building some terrain, working on the assumption that since it’s nice and non-genre specific, then I’d be able to concentrate on it long enough to finish it to a high enough standard to re-ignite my enthusiasm for painting the actual miniatures that are currently insulating the loft. The fact that it’s the current Guild group-build also helped…

Last year, I put together a rocky outcrop made of foamboard, to add some height to our muskets and Tomahawks games. It came out quite well, however, it did look a bit odd on its own, with no other similar hill or outcrops. With this in mind, and with half the foamboard still remaining, I decided to put another, bigger outcrop together, as well as some Big Ominous Rocks™ to place around them, and blend them into the landscape a bit. It would also give The Bear somewhere to live when he’s not chewing his way through the warring factions…

The Original Outcrop

The New Outcrop

Taking shape…

Bocage!

Something that occurred to us when playing M&T was that the Indians could really do with some more cover when conducting ambushes, and the roads could be made to look a bit more claustrophobic for the troops marching down them. With this in mind I also set about making some “bocage” type hedges to wall in the roads, and add an air of menace and unease to proceedings (should also serve to channel the armoured hordes of 3rd Shock Army into nice neat killing lanes for the MILANs and 120mm APFSDS of 1BR Corps...). It’s all a bit experimental with the hedges themselves justnow. I have no idea how these are going to look when they’re finished…

Still not quite sure how effective this method is; it definitely needs more height anyway. Some bits worked really well, and look very convincing, like this bit with the brown lichen showing through as bare branches-

But other bits didn't, like this bit where too much flock clumped together...

Big Ominous Rocks™

Unfortunately the PVA has caused the MDF bases to warp a bit. Will need to see about rectifying that…

I’ve never been totally happy with the dead flat “bowling green” surface on the tops of the outcrops. I had been consciously trying not to fall into my usual trap of making a very naturalistic piece of scenery which looks perfect but is totally unusable since no figures will stand up on it due to the landscaping; however, on this occasion I’ve went too far the other way. As a result, I’ve decided to compromise and go back and vary the shades of static crass on the surfaces, and hopefully break up the look of it a wee bit…

Still a bit of work to do; I'm going to add in some patches of a lighter shade of flock, and also re-cover the plain green areas on the new outcrop, as it's quite thin. I'll also revisit the bocage sections and build them up a bit (got the two long stretches to do, too) and then crack on the with the rocks...

Cheers
Iain