Building some Ash Waste hills terrain for Necromunda was a daunting task – is making rocks out of wood inspired or insane?
The time dilation effect of lockdown(s) has lead me to believe the Ash Waste starter set came out a year or two ago. It was crushingly revealed about four years ago at Adepticon and I could feel more grey hair appearing.
After running a successful Zone Mortalis-style Uprising campaign ‘Emperor Falls’ last year, it was finally time to leave the metal caves of the underhive and enjoy the rocky caves of the Ash Wastes.
I had already made some buildings and chimney stacks to suit the outside world but I didn’t have any natural environment pieces. It had been almost 20 years since I made any hills (polystyrene and green flock anyone?) so I had a pretty blank canvas.
Planning a corker
I’d already used cork on a few other projects (like these blood pools) and I’d read in a model train magasine somewhere that cork bark was often used as a simulacrum for modelling rock faces.
I ordered a kilo of cork bark (2.2 pounds for Imperialists) and was surprised at how much turned up. Turns out cork bark is very light!
I had a bunch of 5mm MDF scatter bases from another project and set to work making rough shapes.
The bases were quite small and I was limited to how wide I could make each ‘hill’, so I concentrated on playable surfaces instead. I wanted a good mix of flat mesas where miniatures could climb onto, but also some classic chest-high-wall sections around the base that could be used as cover.
Multiple scales are always in mind, and I needed these hills (now looking more like rocky outcrops) to be suitable for 28mm Necromunda but also 54mm Inquisitor game boards should the need arise.
Building the outcrops
I used tin foil scrunched into balls as an interior and packed the large chunks of cork bark around them in interesting shapes, using hot glue to secure them. I worked smaller chunks of cork into recesses to help fill holes.
Once everything was blocked out, PVA glue was liberally applied to all the connective pieces to form a stronger bond (I don’t trust hot glue on porous/flaky material) and packed bits of polystrene in the gaps.
Once everything was very dry, several layers of cheap wall filler were applied with spudger and finger.
Cheap wall filler is delightful to work with but a very poor hobby product on its own. It crumbles under the slightest touch and reactivates when wet, so to combat this I always mix in some PVA glue to my filler (or apply a few watered-down coats afterwards).
Leaving everything to thoroughly dry (again!) it was time for some final texturing with PVA and sand applied to the horizontal surfaces.
A little protip when doing big terrain pieces is to wait for the sand/PVA mix to dry (again again) and go over with another coat of watered down PVA. This fully encapsulates each sand particle in adhesive, rather than just sticking to the bottom, and gives you a much more robust tabletop experience.
Painting the hills
This was my first time painting big bits of sandy scenery so I wasn’t sure how to approach it. Everything was undercoated in black primer as usual, then the ‘sandy’ bits were sprayed with Army Painter Leather Brown and the rock faces were sprayed with TTCombat Laser Cut Brown (now OOP).
I didn’t write down my recipe at the time like a dingus, and now I’m left squinting at pictures trying to parse my recipes.
For the sand and bases I followed the same recipe for my chimney stacks – undercoat Zandri Dust, drybrush with Ushabti Bone, then wash with Seraphim Sepia. If I want to add a dusty effect to anything touching the ground, I’d drybrush a little Zandri Dust onto it.
I’m fairly certain the hill faces were washed first to make them darker, and drybrushed with a medium brown (Maybe even zandri dust) with a final lighter drybrush of Ushabti Bone.
The finishing touch was a few grassy tufts for a variation in texture and a little pop of colour. I got my grass tufts from Bad Squiddo games.
The finished articles
And they were done! I need to work on my photography setup for large stuff but that’s by the by. These were the first real big “natural” scenic pieces I had done as a legal adult and I’m very happy with how they turned out.
Although they started out as hills conceptually, I think I like them more as rocky outcrops. Something to break up the battlefield with cover and line of sight with different textures than buildings and rusted metal.
They also have plenty of playable surfaces on top, and will lend themselves nicely to having walkways strewn between them.
They were relatively inexpensive to make too, with the cork being the only thing I purchased specifically. At time of writing, you can buy a bundle of 1kg cork bark from the cork shed website for about £20, which is what I used to make everything in this set.
I’ll need to find another supplier of 5mm MDF as my usual guy has dropped off the radar. If anybody knows someone who does bevelled 5mm MDF bases hit me up!
And best of all it all fits neatly into a 48L really useful box with space for spares! Time to start scheming about the next project…
