Woebetides Terrain Update

I drew a map. It's not to scale but it shows the minimum major terrain items needed for September's Woebetides campaign weekend. The coloured in items are done.

The half- (or three-quarter-) hills around the void in the middle of the main table don't need to be exactly as portrayed - I just want something that will indicate to players that the centre of the main island is mostly impassible highlands.

A couple of days ago I decided to make a start at building something suitable:

I decided to make three 90 degree corner hills with profiles such that they can be combined to form a single 270 degree outside corner.

 

I tried different ways of building up the slopes with off-cuts of polystyrene. In the end, the best method (sadly not shown above) was progressively smaller slices alternating at 90 degrees to each other. Hot glue worked OK for attaching the polystyrene as long as I didn't leave the glue gun switched on too long. If the glue got to hot it melted the polystyrene too much.

I've now started covering the polystyrene with kitchen towel soaked in watered down PVA. I added a bit of cheap brown acrylic to the water/glue mix.

I've also tried a bit of filling with my usual tile grout mix and also some scrunched-up kitchen foil that might serve as a rocky outcrop.

I may paint the longer ridge (on the left in the picture below) as a pathway - for plot purposes I want three or four routes into the highlands.

Update when the first layer of groundwork has dried - it's scorching in Yorkshire right now so hopefully that won't be long!