One thing that my wargaming tables always lacked were true cliffs that I could use as a back drop or on the edge of a board. I've seen so many impressive model railroad displays over the years with cliffs, I was determined to finally make my own.
I wanted them in true epic scale as well, beyond the usual single tier hill-height rock outcroppings you often see on wargaming tables.
I decided on 2" pink insulation board, having used it for so many other rock and stone projects, it seemed the perfect material for this project.
I glued several layers of 2" foam together, leaving the sections at their original width of 2 feet, I glued several cut lengths together.
This is what they looked like when I started;
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The tools I used were a razor saw, a utility knife, and sand paper of medium grit. I decided on a bluff-style cliffs where the very top would have a flat, grassy area, as well as several areas at different heights that would have a little grass and vegetation.
Essentially I approached it like a sculpture, keeping in mind that one side of the cliff would stay perfectly flat since they were designed for the edge of the board.
I made V-shaped cuts with the razor saw and then went in with the utility knife and cut more precise fissures to create the rock shapes. I was careful to cut some fissures across the layers of foam so that it wasn't obvious that several pieces of foam had been glued together.
Finally, to give the stone a more natural feel, I took sand paper and went over the whole piece, kind of taming down the jaggedness. This sanding also helped to blend in some of the more obvious razor saw cut lines.
The last step still to be done is to fill the gaps in between the layers with some wall filler and then give the filler lines a final bit of sanding. The pieces will be painted in a brownish gray with highlights.
In two of the photos I included a Conflix 25mm building and also a GW Citadel tree to show the size comparison. These cliffs would be several hundred feet in height if they were real life, which is exactly the epic height that I wanted. I think the results are pretty good so far;
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"goes large."
