Rocky Outcrops …from cheap Aquarium Supplies.

Like rather a lot of the scenic items I’ve been showing here recently, I picked these up ages ago – a couple of years, in fact. After getting some pretty sweet ready-to-use pieces on massive sale from the local Pet Warhouse (which all seem to have disappeared – before I could game with any of them or even photograph them all!) 😦  I thought I’d do one better and see what eBay had to offer. Turned out that eBay was actually pretty crap. While the price was alright, for my money I got four pieces, one of which arrived broken, made of a cheap, fragile resin, painted badly, and with smooth black internals visible. I mean, for your cheap Aquarium they were probably alright, but for scenery, I did the only thing I could do – put them in a tub and forgot they existed.

Fast forward to a few days ago, I found them while rummaging around looking for something else, and once again, with Dave Stone’s Winter of Scenery Challenge being a thing, I recided “fuck it” and got them done. Vallejo Mud Effects on the insides of the holes to cover that horrible smooth texture, black primer, a pretty bad brownish-grey spray from Bunnings, several layers of drybrushing, and then three shades of weathering powders mixed with brush-on matte varnish added and tissue-wiped to give some variation to the colour. A tiny application of my Sepia-Black mix of Vallejo model dip in a few spots to uneven-out where the powders dried too uniform, and we’re done. As out models show, they’re an ok size for line-of-sight blockers and will work well enough across most genres.

Back to the Pet Store #1: Desert Bluffs

Not long after I posted up my Pet Store terrain find back in December, Marouda, Pyro and Orez took a detour to the Pet Warhouse where I got that first one after grabbing something to eat. Orez came inside with me, and we took a look at what was on offer.

I’ll tell the more interesting story with the next post on this stuff, but I managed to pick up a few pieces again as they had a pre-Christmas sale going. I thought this was a nice, impressively-sized piece of terrain that allows for gameplay in, around, and even over the top of it. It’ll go well with yesterday’s Shardwrack Spines.

I really need to get a few more mats, as my only desert mat is this one. The texture is nice, but it’s also very plain.

I intended to post this up before Christmas, but after all the bullshit that December brought, I’m showing this piece now in January. While it does fit the month’s theme it doesn’t count as something that I’ve done as this is untouched, and as bought. Even though this is a desert-ey bluff, I’m actually quite happy to leave the plants completely as-is, as they add a nice bit of interest and colour depth to the piece, and makes it a bit Oasis-ey. Wonderwalls and Pet Barns FTW!