Time to make a mess!!
So I went and got a shiny new stack of styrofoam (XPS to be precise):
(Yes, and a nice spool of wire as well)
The glue on the first few hills is drying at the moment:
Why hills? Well, after close to two decades of gaming, I still didn't have any... <shame> I've been looking over my scenery collection lately, with an eye towards my plans for Quest/Chanson de Geste story-driven skirmish gaming, and I'm in the progress of getting bitten by the Warmachine bug again (curse that Kickstarter...).
Looking over my (rather small) scenery collection, it looked decidedly...flat.
Hence, hills were required. I did a quick google for ideas and quickly decided I didn't like the fast and easy stepped hills. I'm a modeler as much as (if not more than) I am a gamer. I want my games and terrain to look good. During this quest for inspiration, I came across TableTop Terraformer's site, I liked his approach and attitude to hill making, and scenery in general, their stuff is amazing! Ideas, inspiration (and some rough and ready sketches) at the ready, I was set to go.
Sadly I couldn't (economically) find the big chunks of bark he used, so I'll have to make due with smaller bark instead (on the up side, I've got a lifetime supply of that stuff now).
So, about the hills themselves:
The bases are foamed PVC I got for free from a friend. Just enough to make the hills sturdy, but still light and easy to work with. They still need to be surfaced with filler before I can start texturing them. These are just some basic smooth hills, just a bit over an inch tall. I've also got some rocky hills in the works/planned. Once those two groups are done, I'm planning to make two or three larger (about the size of that two-part hill) and taller (2") hills.
This is my first experience with XPS, and I have to say, I love the stuff. Cuts easily and clean (unlike the usual insulation foam, with those downright evil little pellets!), my foamcutter plays very nice with it, giving clean and controlled cuts (again, unlike the insulation foam of Dooom!). Seeing how easy and fun it is to carve, I'm looking forward to trying what else I can make with it. :-)
Oh, and I mentioned a spool of wire somewhere earlier, didn't I?
That's another thing I'm wanting to do: trees. I have several stands of trees, but they are rather, erm, friendly looking:
Rather bright foliage, fairly thin trees, like in a young forest, or city park. They've done fine service for about a decade and a half now, and I'll happily keep using them until they desintegrate.
But I also need some more butch, intimidating trees. After all, questing monsters tend to live in dark and forbidding forests...
That's where the wire comes in, I want to twist it into a collection of trees. (You can see the first tester on the topmost picture of a hill.) As for mounting, I won't put them on nice, flat, park-like bases, like the trees above. I plan to model the "scary" trees on rougher ground: rocks, earth banks and such.
I just need to figure out how to give some trees proper bulk for a "dread king of the woods" type effect.
See you soon, I've got more mess (and terrain) to make!
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