Warhammer Terrain on the Cheap

Getting terrain done is always a bit of a chore. Despite the fact I don't have a board to play on at home still I decided to push on and get some of my terrain done. I started these rocks a while ago and had left them sitting half done for ages. Its like all the other terrain projects I have at the moment. There is an unfinshed trench piece, a house and the dreaded Dreadstone Blight sitting awaiting some paint on my desk at the moment.

Getting these rocks together was really cheap. It is €5 for a big bag of cork chunks. It is even possible to get a much larger bag for €10. I think this one weighs in at 180 grams of cork which is suprisingly a lot. I break these up into more managable chunks and glue them to a CD. I generally try to use the inserts you get in a CD spindle, the clear plastic CD's that are used to stop the real ones from scratching on the spindle. Even using the actual blank CD's are cheap enough. The most frequent target has to be free game CD's I get with demos and such. These as bases are great as they are strong and not too flexible so they won't warp much. With the cork glued on I usually use some air drying clay to fix the edges. The cork won't sit flush with the base and it can look a little odd. Adding a clay edge makes the join flush. It also offers some weight to the piece. I flock over the clay once it is dry and then these pieces are ready to get some paint. All in all the piece can't cost more than a Euro to make.

I spray the piece grey. As you can see I miss a lot of the cracks and odd angles that the cork has. This is fine as it adds a nice texture once the painting is complete. I wouldn't recommend leaving too many, a few here and there are fine. If it is overdone then the effect can be lost. Once the grey is dry I then add some green. This is to represent moss or lichen. I just mix some catachan green with a glaze medium and apply it where water might sit under overhangs on the rocks or along run-off channels. It only takes a few seconds but helps to add a nice texture to the rock once everything is done. Over this a light wash of badab black is applied to heighten the shadows. Finally I dry brush in two stages of lightening grey. All in all if you are not counting drying times this takes little more than fifteen minutes with adequately sized brushes. If you are doing it with a big bag of cork over a few bases there is barely any waiting for things to dry.