Today’s cheap terrain is “slag trees”. Useful for alien desert worlds or Chaos-infected terrain, slag trees can provide decent cover for your little space men (or elf men, as the need arises).
Total cost: ~$5.00
Materials:
- Plastic cup
- Plastic lining (e.g. garbage bag)
- Plaster (preferably something stronger than plaster of paris)
- Water
Instructions:
This terrain piece is easiest to make for those of you already making plaster casts for other projects. Chances are, you’re going to have some extra plaster at the end. Rather than letting it go to waste, pour the remaining plaster into a small puddle on some plastic lining. Wait for this to harden, and repeat. This will produce the “layered” effect shown. As the plaster hardens in each layer, some of it will drip or ooze down over lower layers. After a couple dozen repetitions, you’ll have a fully-formed “slag tree” ready for painting!
Depending on how much extra plaster you have, you may want to work on two or even three slag trees at a time. If you’re not making plaster casts while doing this, you could make an entire forest in a weekend.
Thanks for the post. that looks completely too easy for such cool results. What do you think about attaching a coat hanger/wire frame for tree limbs to a base and then globbing the plaster onto that? kinda like this.
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You’d probably need pretty thick wire for the first couple layers (or very thick plaster), but it might work. I’m probably going to buy some more plaster so I might try it out and post the results.