Colonial: North West Frontier terrain

During the last two weeks I have been working on making terrain for my first venture into colonial wargaming - The North West Frontier, and more precisely 1897 - Pathan Uprising.

The incredibly rough terrain of the regions lends itself to having some mountainous terrain. Looking around at what other wargamers have done I found a lot of inspiration. I was however unsure about what materials I was going to use.

A rough storm in Denmark knocked down a tree in my parents garden and while cleaning up the mess the fallen tree had cause, my mother gathered the bark from the tree. This turned out to be very suitable as rocks. I cut out some shapes from cheap isolation foam and started hot glueing pieces of bark onto the foam. Afterwards I put on some polyfilla, to make the transition from the bark to the foam more natural, it also had the added bonus of giving the pieces some weight.

Everything with a layer of polyfilla.

Then came the painting which was easy but time consuming. As a last thing I added some small decorative stone that I had lying around to the inner edges of the pieces.

For each of the "mountains" I made a large hill so that they had added height and on the tabletop it will prevent them from looking like they have suddenly just bust through the ground. I again used cheap isolation foam that I covered in polyfilla, sanded and spray painted with different earth colours.

The rough terrain pieces are made from small Amera Plastic Mould hills that I bought some time ago. They have been mounted onto 3mm mdf bases and the entire base was covered with polyfilla, sanded and spray painted. I then added some small tree branches and some tea leaves that my girlfriend did not like the taste of.

The final pieces of terrain where some Pathan buildings, which I made in almost the exact way as the Arab buildings that I made for SAGA C&C last year. This time though I added a removable roof for the buildings so that they can now hold figures inside.

Once on the tabletop I will added some large rocks, trees and bushes and hopefully the board will look great and be playable at the same time. Now all I need is for my friend Frank to finish painting his Pathans, so that we can have a game.