Scratch building some mountains for my Samurai games

I am always impressed by the screen paintings of Samurai battles. Many of them depict armies fighting in mountainous terrain. So I thought it was time to have a go at making some mountains for the tabletop.

A scene from one of the screens I always enjoy looking at again and again.

I decided to use upholstery foam to make the mountains. It is a firm foam that can be shaped with a large, sharp knife, and for this job I used my sharpest carving knife. I cut out two identical pieces of foam, or as close to identical as possible, then placed them back to back and began carving them into shape.

The foam is carved using a large sharp knife.

Once I was happy with the shape, it was time to start painting. I use a household acrylic paint. I have a tin of green paint which I use for my basing and other terrain pieces so I have a consistent colour tone to my tabletop. When painting the foam I occasionally dipped my brush in water just to help make the paint flow better when using a scrubbing motion with my old brush.

Before the paint was dry, and it does take a long time to dry when applied to the foam, I added some brown paint which I blended in with the green. Finally, I used a sand coloured paint to lighten up areas, again blending it in with the brown and green.

A completed mountain.

Once the paint has dried, you can dry-brush a lighter sand colour over the surface to highlight any raised areas if you wish. I decided not to do this, as I was happy with the overall effect as it stood.

The mountain can be used as a single large feature, or the two pieces can be separated and positioned along the edge of the tabletop.

The two halves of the mountain.

The mountain was looking a little barren, so I decided some vegetation was needed. The simplest approach was to take some cocktail sticks, push them into the foam and hang pieces of lichen from them to represent vegetation.

Cocktail sticks are pushed into the foam at different angles.

Lichen is hung off the sticks.

A game in progress using the mountain along the table edge.

This is not the first time I have used upholstery foam for terrain. I have previously used it to make English Civil War fortifications and hills for my Sci-Fi games. As I still have some foam left over, I plan to make another two mountains.

One of the benefits of using foam for terrain features is it is light weight, pretty much unbreakable, and easy to store away (generally thrown on top of cupboards or shelving units).