A few more mountains...

Many years ago I was inspired by the 'profile mountains' displayed on the old Major General blog. Essentially they are 2 dimensional mountain range terrain pieces. 

I just had to make some myself! They are a  very useful way of providing a backdrop and both indicating impossible going and dividing the tabletop up. I last used these in the Sicily Megablitz game I ran, and  before that, they turned up in the series of 'Galactic Heroes' Star Wars games I ran prior to lockdown. They don't get used a lot, but are handy to have. 

They are fairly sturdy, thick cardboard stuck to an inner core of expanded polystyrene, the whole thing covered in multiple layers of paint, PVA and builders sand. I did them brown as I find it a much more useful colour than grey, as they can be arid uplands in eg Tunisia. The core allows you to put bases of troops 'in' them, if appropriate.

Anyway, WD Display Team (north) are planning a game next year which takes place in fairly vertiginous terrain, so I thought it was time to make a few more/

It was a pleasant day, so I built the basic structures outside. 

Here is the first pass. I only made these single layer rather than double layer as they are intended to be used purely as scenery and not have any troops on them. Each strip is 12" long, 1" wide and 4" to the highest peak. The older sections are 6" on the second row of (higher) peaks but 4" for the front (lower) row. 

I basically just stuck them all together with a thick application of PVA. I added the V shaped infills to give them some depth width-wise and provide a contrast, they also acted as side supports for the main ridges. I did have some ideas about using balsa strips as extra support, but they seemed pretty sturdy once the glue set.

I let them dry overnight and then went over them with my big pot of brown mix-pot emulsion. I had this made up years ago and it matches one of my terrain cloths.

Unfortunately the paint has finally gone off, and irretrievably separated, so it was more of a brown wash than paint(!) . Shame as I last used it a couple of years ago and it was fine then, but it is well over 20 years old. I've got a big tube of brown acrylic craft paint so I'll have to use that for the topcoat.

Overnight for the paint to dry as it makes the cardboard quite soft. 

I also had to make up this odd looking piece.

What on earth could this be for?

Next step is to give each piece a thick coat of PVA over the whole thing and cover it in builders sand to give it some texture and a bit more heft. It also hardens the surface a lot. All my polystyrene hills have multiple layers of PVA on them, it makes them as hard as plastic, I wish commercial terrain makers would do the same! 

Once the sand was dry, I went over them again with brown paint, this time my craft acrylic. It is a bit darker than my old match pot, but for background terrain like this it doesnt really matter. 

Another overnight to dry. 

Once they were dry, I gave them a fairly heavy drybrush of Magnolia shade emulsion paint.

It lightens them, picks out the texture and highlights them. I like Magnolia as it is a light but warm colour, I use it to drybrush my figure bases for arid terrain too.

Last step is adding some flock to the lower areas. I used two different colours, one some dark green railway flock and the second my Noch static grass.

While I was at it, I added some flock to my old mountains too. This bit is quite messy as the surplus flock goes everywhere, and it continues to fall off for days afterwards! 

But once it is all dry you can do stuff like this. A sort of fjiord perhaps. The odd narrow mountain section I made is the capping piece for the fjiord. 

Ooer, there seems to be a Mosquito flying down it! What will next years participation game be I hear you ask? There might be a clue here.....