Homepage > Scatter Terrain - Rocks 1

Scatter Terrain - Rocks 1

06/04/2024 22:58

Rocks

As I had previously mentioned here I like wargames and love scatter terrain you can use to break up open areas of the game board.

Rocks are quite useful as scatter terrain and I thought should be quite easy to make. I had an idea to make rocks out of standard expanded polystyrene many years ago and had made several prototypes. The one you see in the picture is one of those prototypes which survived and was forwarded to this final build.

These were pieces of expanded polystyrene from household appliance packaging cut to rough shape with a sharp knife and then attacked with a blunt knife and finger nail to pull out lumps giving that rough surface effect. It didn't have to look perfect as everything was getting covered in a layer of wall filler, but I needed enough definition to not be lost when applying the wall filler.

Once the polystyrene was roughly where I wanted it shape wise, the polystyrene blobs were attached to pieces of hardboard I had cut for me by a friend who has a great woodwork set-up. I laid out the pieces onto the hardboard, traced around them, then left enough space for a lip if I wanted to add small foliage etc. before these were cut out and sanded. A final shape by hand with some wood files and some sandpaper and I had wooden bases for my polystyrene. After the polystyrene was attached to the wooden bases they got two thin coats of wall filler.

Next up was adding those bits of scenery scatter (sand, cork pieces, grit, etc.) to look like small pieces of rock had fallen off and gathered at the base of each. After these were assembled and dried, everything got a base coat of black paint and Mod Podge.

I was thinking along the lines of granite or slate for these so the paint scheme was a heavy over-brush with a dark blue, followed by successive over-brushes by lighter blues. I wasn't choosy about what direction I was painting on the over-brushed blues and so ended up painting myself.

It looks like I was killing Smurfs!

A few areas were given a red ink wash or a purple ink wash to add a bit of variety to the rocks. Everything then got a black wash before being dry-brushed with the last light blue I'd used, followed by light dry-brush with a white-blue.

Before I added the flock and foliage added a bit of green ink to those areas which might pool water or have water running down along the rock face.

You can get a sense of scale here with my 28mm Dwarf Warrior and Human Wizard models I use to check my builds. Much like my previous scatter terrain project, everything fits into an under bed storage box and will adequately cover a 4ft square game board.