Rocky Wasteland Terrain

A new-ish hobby store in our area just recently moved to a new, bigger space and has an eye towards hosting miniature wargames. A buddy of mine made them 4 gaming tables, complete with storage space underneath and recruited me to make some terrain for them. Although not strictly historical, in fact, most of the games played will probably be 40K, possibly also some Star Wars Legion, Warhammer The Old World and others, I am sure somewhere on our planet, at some time there was a rocky, barren wasteland like this.

The store owner bought 4 mats from Mantic Games; this scenery is for the Hellscape Battlemat:

Clearly, somewhere with serious volcanic activity. I chose to go with standard grey rocky out crops with little vegetation. I saw the mats briefly before starting this project and In Real Life this mat is neither as bright or as brown as this photo suggests. I may have to adjust the colour of the pieces once I have seen them on the mat.

The bases are based on Games Workshops recommended guidelines for tournament terrain. There are 6 , 6x12 inch pieces, 4 4x6 inch and 2 5 x10 inch pieces. 

All the rock is insulation foam, with chunks tore off with a pair of very rough nippers. 

The torn foam has a nice texture to it that I would not have got if I had used a knife or a hot wire cutter. The texture was enhanced with Sculptamold which was also used to blend the larger pieces into the base and each other.

A mix of mostly sand with some Woodland Scenics Ballast (both fine and large) was glued down and sealed with home made sealer.

After priming with a light grey, I sponged white paint, yellow ochre and burnt sienna over the rocks before spraying everything with Golden Acrylics High Flow Shading Grey:

The Shading Grey darkens everything and blends the sponged colours into each other and the base coat. After a couple coats of mat varnish, I added some 6 mm dry grass tufts and called her done:

I may have to revisit the colours once I have seen the terrain on the mat. For the next three tables the owner would like me to use Games Workshop's 40K terrain kits with the basing themed to specific Battlemats.