From LeeH - Rocky Desert Hills (70 Points)

I was planning on getting some Berber Cavalry finished this week but they are taking longer than expected. I returned to work this week and boy did I hit the ground running! I’m making progress with the Cavalry but I think it will take until next week to get them finished. I certainly don't want to rush them so, in the meantime, I thought I would submit some hills which I have been working on. I wanted rocky irregular hills for my Algerian/Morrocan desert setting and decided to start from scratch using offcuts of HD Foam from previous projects. They were glued onto 2mm MDF sheets using PVA, which was my first mistake. It took several days for this to dry properly slowing down the construction. Next time I’ll use a glue gun for a faster build. 

Once the basic outline had been established I coated them in ready-mixed tile grout which sets hard but remains slightly flexible so isn’t brittle when hard. Again I put a little too much on so it took several days to dry, next time I’ll make the surface skim a bit thinner. 

When fully dry The hills were primed with a cheap art-shop acrylic and then given a base coat spray of Desert Yellow. Three dry bushes with successive lighter acrylics and the basic hills were completed. The last stage was adding extra stones and rocks and grass tufts

Here are the finished hills with a few figures on them for scale. 

I will make more hills later, now that I feel I have got the basic technique nailed down. As for points scoring the overall dimensions are as follows:

Corner Hill - 16”x12”x3.5” = 672cm3
Medium Hill - 7”x11”x3.5” = 269cm3
Small Hill - 5”x7”x2”= 70cm3

That works out about 4.5 terrain cubes but I think that ought to be rounded down to take into account the sloped sides so I think 3 terrain cubes or 60 points is about right (but I defer to your judgement Dave). 

From DaveD

Holy heaps of mountains Lee! That's some fine geography work there. I love seeing these kind of scratch builds - so i am going to go with 3.5 cubes worth - who know what further heights you will scale this challenge - onwards and upwards