Recently I’ve been working on a big solid bridge structure for our mordheim terrain. I made this using only a bit of styrofoam that already had an arch-like shape, and cardboard.
I must say that I’m very happy the way the styrofoam part currently looks: like solid pieces of stone. The cardboard part however still looks like cardboard. Something that doesn’t really has a ’solid’ feeling to it.

After thinking about it for a bit with Vincent, we figured that some cheap filler that Vincent bought a while ago might be the solution to this problem. The actual idea is something we based off of this post that Ashton Sanders made quite a while ago about a similar product that we used called ’spackle’.

The theory of using the filler is something like this: you put a whole bunch of the stuff on the area of the terrain piece that you’re not happy with, and you give this part a bit of texture with the filler, covering up whatever type of material is under there.

It actually works quite good too! The only thing that you should be aware of is that in order to make something look older, it’s important that you don’t apply the filler as neatly as you’d usually do. Be as rough as you’d like: you can cover the entire surface to get a really smooth effect, or just leave bits a bit open, like I did, in order to get something that is…Well, less smooth, basicly.

I made two before and afters to show you the difference that occured after just a couple of minutes of work. As soon as the entire bridge piece is ‘fillered’ (heh), I’ll be posting that too. That way you’ll see what the effect is on a terrain piece rather than a small sample.

Here’s the bridge, with already a wee bit of filler applied to the cardboard.

And here are the before and afters for both styrofoam and cardboard. The styrofoam simply loses it’s ‘bumpy’ texture when you apply a thin layer, and the cardboard has a thick layer, giving it a very cool texture.

The pictures also show the tube of filler (called ‘plamuur’ in Dutch) and the tool I was applying it with. I’m pretty sure anything that’s a bit sturdy will work, though.

If anybody knows a better or a different way to accomplish something like this, be sure to leave a message! I’m really curious to see what other terrain builders are using.