Quick, easy and cheap cacti!

[Chris P Bacon]

I decided my games needed some soft cover of sorts and since we never seem to use hazardous terrain i decided i wanted a cacti field (or a few patches). After an evening of searching google i came across a tutorial from a guy who used nails and clay to make them (https://westerngames.wordpress.com/2014/01/23/making-saguaro-cactus-terrain/). Now, it's January and I'm pretty skint, so there's no way i could walk in the house with a bag of nails and some clay without getting interrogated by the missus. I had a look round at the bits I had and decided to try and make my own version:

Step 1: I took an assortment of screws and screwed them through the bottom of some old bases I had lying around.

Step 2: sellotape a bit of paperclip to the screw to make the "arm" of the cacti.

Step 3: Cover it in green stuff!!!!

Step 4: Use a spare screw or something else ridged to make the ridges on the cactus by rolling it up and down the greenstuff.

Step 5: repeat until all done!

 

Took me less than an hour and cost me nothing. I'm going to make small zones for the cacti to sit in to represent patches of hazardous soft terrain. Once the greenstuff's hardened I'll do the bases and paint them. Ill post more updates when completed!

 

[Burnin' Coal]

Great job you did there ! They look really good and I look forward to seeing them painted up ...thanks for sharing 

[EnternalVoid]

I have been thinking a lot about doing cacti for a while to add some more to terrain but not found a way I liked.  Might have to seriously give this method a try as it looks along the lines I wanted.  Thank you for sharing.

[Vorschlag]

Nice, thanks for that, I've been using green stuff or grey stuff by itself, can't believe I didn't think of this since I use the wire build for trees before green stuff,.

[Nimo]

Great, job. I've done some cactus myself, lately. But with normal wire armatures and only a few to cast them.

The Screws are a nice Idea. They have a great Texture for the putty to hold onto.

In my opinion, you cold try to smooth the surface a little more, before pressing the lines into them.

[Chris P Bacon]

So I've managed to finish them off today, here's the next few steps to take me to completion:

I got some old cd's, covered them with a piece of thin card and glued some sand on to represent 5" clumps of cacti

I covered the cacti bases with the same sand mixture

After a white primer I painted the bases, I didn't have any decent size pots of paint but luckily I found a tester pot of "terracotta" masonry paint in a cupboard. I drybrushed a desert sand colour over the top of this once dry.

Then I painted the cacti with a light green, put a green wash over the top, glued some clumps of grass to the bases and all done!

They're not gonna win any scenery awards any time soon but for a few hours work and less than £5 in materials I'm made up with the results. Looking forward to my resser friend luring me into them in future games. If I was to do this again though I'd either use thinner screws or glue the screws onto the base rather than screwing them through from the bottom. Some of the bases are wonky as the heads of the screws are quite large. 

Thanks for all the comments and support from everyone on here and the AWP facebook groups!!

 

 

[Necromick Jerome]

Wow looking forward to a game with these on the board mate!!! Amazing end result!!!

[ArcticPangolin]

They look great! Fermented River Monks trying out some raw tequila