Awhile back, I stumbled across a Mel the Terrain Tutor video that shared a technique for using plaster bandages and spackle to make quite decent looking hill terrain. It’s a cool technique and I had some leftover packaging that had the potential to become something cool, so I decided to give it a try.
I started by cutting out some MDF bases and using a sander to add a simple bevel to the edges. I made sure I had a larger piece of MDF to use with a bit of packaging I had lying around looked like it had the potential to make a cool piece of ruins / mountain pass terrain. Some smaller bases were cut to make some smaller bits of scatter in the same theme.
Since this technique is simple and safe enough to do with kids, I tried to make this a family project. My son helped a bit with laying some of the plaster bandages, and we had some fun creating the hills before he got bored and I finished the rest of the job on my own.
After this, the terrain was left of a shelf for a bit to cure, before it could be taken back down to add some details to it. My son and I added sand and rocks to create additional texture. I tried to add mine where I thought them most likely to accumulate on a real mountain, as well as near one of the smaller slightly collapsed monoliths to simulate debris. My son had a more orderly approach to laying down the sand, which I rolled with even if it didn’t look as natural as I was hoping for.
After I was satisfied with this, I added a cairn miniature that I had kicking around from an old Bones kickstarter to add a small bit of implied story before undercoating everything with a rattle-can.
Due to just general busyness, the undercoated hills then sat on my shelf for about fourteen months before I was able to find time to paint them. The dirt was done by starting with Burnt Umber, the shading up through Burnt Sienna to Yellow Ochre using progressively lighter dry-brushing passes. Lastly a mix of White and Yellow ochre was added sparingly to some of the cliff edges to accentuate them a bit.
The rocks were done with a mix of Paynes Grey and Phthalo Blue, shading up through a mid grey / blue mix and then just grey. I used both Yellow Ochre and a pastel blue as the last drybrush colours, aiming for a bit of colour variation since these were meant to be stone after all. I used some cheap craft paints for this, picked up from a local newsagent. They worked fine, but I might make sure I grab matte paints rather than satin next time as the finish wasn’t what I was aiming for even if I was happy with the colours.
It’s at this point that I playtested the terrain with my son at this point using a simplified version of Age of Fantasy Skirmish (mostly the combat rules, we’re slowly building up to introducing the rest). It mostly worked OK as a terrain piece, but one thing that did come to light was that despite my efforts to avoid it, the slopes on most sides of the hill were a little bit too steep. Most figurines couldn’t stand on them as they ascended the mountain. So at this point I could call the scatter pieces done but I clearly have a bit more work to do on the mountain itself.
I built up a series of small ledges using tissues and plaster atop each slope, using a small base and a miniature with a 40mm base to test that the ledges were large enough and level enough for figures to stand on. Rocks and sand were added again to create details and the new plaster was primed black. I used an airbrush to prime it all this time, since that gave me enough control to avoid painting over the areas I’d already completed.
Once the primer was dry it was time to paint. It only took me a few months this time between priming it and putting it on a shelf and bringing it down to paint – see, I’m getting better.
I aimed for the same colours as last time, although I think the burnt umber does show through a bit more in the new sections. Still, I’m happy enough with the colours. The cairn finally got some colour added to it as well and with that it’s time to call it done.
Just a little over two years from start to finish, mostly because life is busy and it sat on a shelf for extended periods. Still. happy with the result and I’ll probably add more to this terrain collection over time.
