BSC2021 McMordain's difficult terrain of some kind

[McMordain]

Ahoy!

This will be either something for Necromunda (more likely) or something Sylvaneth themed for my AoS army (less likely).

[AKULA]

Good luck mate, Necromunda terrain sounds very interesting 

[McMordain]

Thanks I just need to think on how make it interesting.

I think I will stick to Necromunda/generic sci-fi and either do something that fits with last years entry (the crashed ship) or with my 2018 build (The Nest).

[McMordain]

I was thinking hard how to make this more interesting, but couldn't come up with anything...
So decided to keep it simple.
I will make some additional pieces to last years crashed ship. The end goal is to make enough terrain for a 3x3 board, themed around an alien swamp. The overall scope of the project goes beyond this competition, as I would like to make some los blockers and other things, but doing some swampy patches fits in well.

I went through my boxes and took everything that could be useful.

I also bought some additional items today and ordered a bunch of static grass in different colors (blues, reds, turquoise etc.).

An important thing in making these terrain pieces is to make them easy to store. I found some empty boxes and decided that anything I make have to fit in those.
First I made a test piece. The base is 3mm thick PVC foam. It is light and I hope it will not warp too much when I apply the water effect. But I want to test it, hence the test piece.




Next I draw an outline for the water and tried to use an electric multitool with a milling head to make some depressions. Well that was a bad idea. It got really messy and the fine plastic shavings got charged and stuck to everything...


Instead I made the sides of the pool from insulation foam and covered it with pva glue and tissue paper. Then it got a black undercoat to make sure no white would stick through the after the next step.

Which was covering the whole thing in Vallejo black and brown thick mud.

Before this I also glued on the snail shell and the plant thing.
The half sphere will have some crystals sticking out of it after I paint it.
Which is the next step so no more of this piece till the end 

Nothing spectacular but if I can finish 3-4 big ones and half a dozen smaller ones during the BSC, I will be happy

[Wirelizard]

Nice, that texture turned out good and swampy looking even just primed black!

From Teh Rools: "You may enter up to six smaller individual bases." so you can get a good number of alien swamp boards done and show them all off for us.

[McMordain]

Slow progress during the weekend. Nothing really exciting, just more of the same.
The second box have three bases. I'm not sure how to use the small one yet.


I found the dividers on the first base to big, so I experimented with a hot glue gun on this one. Also added some of the new acquisitions as alien plants.

After this I covered it with the pva+tissue combo and primed it. (Forgot to make a photo). Then I added the texture.

I like better how this turned out, so hot glue it is on further pieces.



I'm still waiting for the colored static grass to arrive (the post is sitting on it for some reason...). I need to wait till I can see them in person, before I can decide how to proceed with the painting part.

Nice, that texture turned out good and swampy looking even just primed black!

From Teh Rools: "You may enter up to six smaller individual bases." so you can get a good number of alien swamp boards done and show them all off for us.

Thanks, though the texture is not primed, it is Vallejo Black Thic mud and Russian Mud. I like how it looks, so I will probably go easy on the still water effect.
I'm also aware of the rules, but a, the bases are not that small (the boxes are 31 x 23 cm) b, I want to add some trees and big rocks to the board, which are not difficult terrains 
But do not worry there will be a lot of swampy ones, the current plan is to make at least a dozen 

[McMordain]

Do to a lot of small things adding up, I couldn't do much since last time...
I did finish building the bases in the second box.
I added to the small base one of these:

Then got the same treatment as the others.
The third base only got the banks, no extra big feature, but I added some "plants" using these:

A couple of them were added to the other bases as well.
No pictures as I forgot to make some before I started painting today... which is done, mostly. I need to make some adjustment here and there.
After that the only thing left is adding the static grass and the water effect.
I got this pack:

but I'm not sure how much should I use.

[marianas_gamer]

Stay the course. This looks interesting!

[McMordain]

Well I added the static grass first to all the bases and then the water effect to two of them.
I started with the smallest base. I like the static grass colors I choose for this, however the application was to uniform and it doesn't look natural. It is a small piece though so it does not look that bad. I did the same thing on the second base and it is much more noticeable there.
So I tried to do the two big ones somewhat differently, and I think they turned out much better. My mother had a different opinion though. She thinks the patches of static grass still look to uniform...
Still at this point I was happy with my work so far. Then I added the water effect...
I again started with the smallest one and added some purple ink to color it. The first mistake as it made it too dark. The second was that I thought the superglue I used to fix the small "plants" and their steam will seal the hole I drilled into the base. Nope, the nice dark purple water effect started to leak... then as I quickly wanted to seal the holes on the bottom, I tipped the base to much and spilled over the bank onto my table...
I'm not sure yet how to repair it, but as it is the smallest one it isn't a huge problem. Probably some repaint and reflock is needed.
Learning from this I used some tape to seal the holes on the other bases and started with the second one.  This time I put some bright green paint into the water. Everything was fine until the water effect reached a point on the side where the I put some static grass. It instantly started to soak it up and slowly spread it along the bank... Managed to stop the spread with some super glue application so only a small section is ruined and I have some ideas about what to do to fix it.
But this will be a problem on the last to pieces as well as I put some grass in places where I can not avoid this soaking issue.
Anyway, this was a good learning curve but I'm not sure how good the end product will look. Especially compared to the other amazing entries 

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

We all go through setbacks - learning is an iterative process. 

I have a lot of such experiences.


Please submit pictures of your finished project - even if it is not quite as you want it to be.
I still want to see it - I think the concept is very nice. 

[McMordain]

Oh, I will, don't worry
I worked to much on this to not submit a photo  and i don't do it to win anyway. I like building stuff.

[Clach Umha]

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