Scatter Terrain for Eutaw Springs at The Other Partizan

 As briefly mentioned last time I wanted to add some new scatter terrain to my collection. This would be rocks and bushes on irregularly shaped bases to supplement what I have been using for many years, which are mostly on round bases which look a bit too regular.

To give the blog post a nice thumbnail, here is a picture including some of the new terrain, so the bubble of suspense is burst...they turned out OK!

Back to the start, though. I began with some irregularly shaped MDF pieces. Some are pond bases from Warbases and the others are from Terrain Lab via eBay. All were given chamfered edges with an electric sander before I deployed the hot glue gun and affixed some rocks pinched from a border in the garden:

With the hot glue in full flow I then attached some clumps of rubberised coco matting. I bought a small amount a long time ago and still have plenty left as it goes a very long way. I just cut a strip from the mat I have and tore that into irregular pieces before gluing down. Once the glue had cooled and firmed up the clumps were given a quick haircut with scissors:

The glue gun was put away and the PVA cam out to play. Diluting it slightly it was brushed onto suitable areas of each base and some builders' sand was sprinkled over and the excess tipped back into its tub. This was then allowed to dry.

Next came a more extensive coat of sand, this time using fine chinchilla sand to cover anything on the base not already spoken for. Again I used diluted PVA and allowed everything to dry in the well-timed autumn sunshine:

It didn't take long for the sand and glue to dry off, allowing me to spray everything with paint. I started with a darkish brown, then aimed some medium grey at the rocks. This was followed with a camouflage green in strategic areas before a quick going over with the grey again. Scruffy, but nature isn't neat and the rocks looked good with a bit of gery underspray:

The sunshine again dried everything nice and quickly, so it was time to get out a medium sized flat-headed brush and go to work with some paint. The green edges used the fence paint I have used before - very poor coverage allows it to work more as a glaze, particulary if it is let down with a little water. The rest of the painting used various craft acrylic paints, mixed to give  variety of colours. I didn't get too precise with this as the traain will really be viewed at a distance and in the background, so there wasn't really a need to weather or shade the rocks too much. A bit of dry brushing with a few shades of grey seemed sufficient. This concluded Saturday, in which I think I made a lot or progress. The Warbases order didn't even arrive until I was half-way through chamfering the other bases.

On to Sunday morning, then. First came some foliage for the large bushes. I used Woodlands Scenics coarse turf as the material and some wallpaper patch repair glue as the adhesive. This is a bit like PVA but stickier and dries faster. It was brushed/dabbed onto the coco fibre clumps and the bases dippied into a tub of turf then shaken off:

Continuing with the wallpaper glue I sprinled on some fine, light green flocking to represent lichen and moss on and around the rocks. Then is went back to the PVA and glued down some dark green clump foliage to add some extra texture and colour variety:

Fortunately the sun was shining again, so I gave everything an hour before soming back to add some coloured tufts. I only used some purple oneas and mixed-colour "wildflower" types. I used a bit of PVA rather than relying ony on the tufts' own adhesive:

In the picture below you can also see a small patch of "formal garden" that I made in the same way, at the same time using some brighter coloured tufts in regular patterns:

The final stage of crafting was to add some static grass using some thinned PVA and a very cheap electrostatic flocking machine (really cheap and I'm not sure it does very much...):

Here are some pictures of the finished scatter pieces on a cleaner board and after a quck spray with matt varnish to seal some of the foliage a bit more firmly:

Wrapping up, here are a couple of pictures taken when practising the layout for next weekend's Eutaw Springs game. The new bases work well against my fleece terrain cloths I think. For a quick project they have given me what I wanted, thanks to some very helpful weather. Rainy days are for painting figures or playing games. You need sun and fresh air for terrain!

Hope to see some of you at Newark Showground next weekend, with a more polished version of this layout. This will be the last show where I have to juggle game prep with working for a living - I retire in March :-)