Let's Rock

A punny title for a post all about rocks, or more specifically, rocks usable for wargames. Now that I am heavily involved in Strontium Dog and my Wild West and Weird West projects I knew I needed more pieces of rock scenery to use in my games and in this post I want to show you my current collection.

First up are these three rock towers produced by Warlord Games as part of their terrain items, where they are called Hoodoo Rocky Terrain. Hoodoos are tall skinny spires of rock that protrude from the bottom of arid basins and "broken" lands. Hoodoos are most commonly found in the High Plateaus region of the Colorado Plateau and in the Badlands regions of the Northern Great Plains. While hoodoos are scattered throughout these areas, nowhere in the world are they as abundant as in the northern section of Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah.

These three towers come in a boxed set and are fully painted. You can buy them in black or brown colours. I opted for the brown coloured set. I'm not sure what they're made of - it feels like some sort of hardened polystyrene. They are very light. Sadly, when I checked the Warlord Games webstore, they were currently out of stock. No price was given for them but I do remember they were very cheap. I bought mine over a year ago. You may remember I used them for the first time in my introductory Strontium Dog batrep, not too long ago.

Moving on, we come to some of the best rocky terrain pieces on the market and they are made by my good friend Dave at Wargames Terrain Workshop. First up is the impressive piece - a Large Natural Arch as it is described on Dave's webstore. This is a huge and chunky piece of resin. It comes in two parts. The thin "leg" at the left is a separate piece. I drilled and pinned it before using epoxy resin to glue it in place. I hid the join with Milliput and added lots of Milliput to the inner surface of the leg, which was flat, in order to give it a more natural look.

I'm using my 28mm scale figure of Vampifan in all of these photos to give you a true sense of scale of the rock pieces. According to the WTW webstore, this piece measures 240mm long by 55mm wide by 140mm tall. Incredibly, for such a huge chunk of resin, it only costs £10 unpainted or £18 if you want Dave to paint it for you. I bought all of my WTW rock pieces unpainted. My painting recipe was to prime them in matt black, then cover them in Foundry Rawhide Shade 11A. I gave them a wash of Citadel Agrax Earthshade. Finally, I dry-brushed them in Foundry Rawhide Shade 11A, then Foundry Rawhide 11B and last of all, Foundry Arctic Grey Shade 33A. I used an old half-inch paintbrush for all of the painting, which was ideal for covering such a large area quickly.

Moving on, is the WTW Natural Arch/Bridge. The piece in the centre of these two photos above and below was supposed to sit atop the two outer pieces to form an arch or a bridge. I decided to keep the pieces separate to give me more smaller pieces. Besides which, I already had two arches and I didn't want a third one. In addition, I glued the top of the pillar from below to the long flat part to give it more height and to offer more protection for those hiding behind it. Also, note that the bottom part of both these pieces were flat. If I'd used them as intended, I'd have wanted to make them look more natural by filling out their bases with Milliput.

I'm very pleased at leaving them as separate items as they give me more bang for my buck. This three piece set costs just £8 unpainted or £14.40 if you want it painted.

Here we have three smaller rock pieces that I bought from the WTW webstore. At the far left is a small rock pillar. This was supposed to have the small rock slab that I glued on top of the bridge above sitting on top of it. Instead, I kept it separate and I rounded off the top of the pillar with a small amount of Milliput. This little piece costs £3 unpainted or £5.40 painted.
Next in line is the Rock Formation - Natural Archway. This piece has been made as intended. Because the base of the crosspiece on top of the two pillars was smooth and flat, I added Milliput to it and gave it a more textured and natural look. It was glued in place with epoxy resin.

The final piece of Dave's rock terrain that I bought is the Small Escarpment, a sloped slab of rock that measures 110mm long by 55mm wide by 50mm high. There's not much more to say about it other than it costs £4 unpainted or £7.20 painted. I have to say that I am mightily impressed with these pieces. They are superbly sculpted, looking very natural, and are great value for money. They are definitely some of Dave's best work.

Finally, because I'm devoting this post to rocky terrain pieces, I thought I'd end with something I sculpted myself many years ago. I made this skull rock piece to go with my Dark Elf army for Warhammer as part of the kingdom of Naggaroth, also known as the Land of Chill. It did appear in a few battles I played as unpassable terrain. I built it around a circular plastic pill/tablet box and covered it in Pronto Das modelling clay, which I sculpted into the shape you see here.

The base, made of very thick card, was covered in small stones taken from my back garden. Sand and gravel were glued to the base to fill in the gaps. The sides of the pillar upon which the skull rested were covered in sand. The whole piece was primed in matt black then dry-brushed with successively lighter shades of grey. I'm really proud of this piece and I'm sure it'll get used again in the future, although not in Warhammer, which I doubt I shall ever play again.