I wanted to create a North African style camp for either Numidians, Moors or some similar type. I figured the terrain of North African simply doesn't have enough trees to create palisades of wood, and that tribal mounted forces like the above wouldn't stick around in one place long enough to use stone for camp walls. So, I guessed they'd use some type of brush, bundles of branches or thorns. I had an idea how to do it, but didn't realize what a pain it would be!
First, I covered the styrene plastic base with a layer of craft foam. A couple dowels along with craft stix, created the hitching post the horse was tied to. An extra Numidian javelinman was converted to a groom leading one horse away. I cut holes into the craft foam to attach all these to the styrene base. So far, so good, and very easy to do.
Now, came the hard part -- creating the bundles of sticks. I bought some wire at a hardware store, snipped it into similar length pieces, then used tiny strips of masking tape to bind them all together. It was pretty fiddly work, splaying out the wire pieces and keeping it all from coming apart. I then dabbed some epoxy onto where the bundles would go, then pressed them onto the epoxy so that the wire sunk a ways into the crat foam. It worked, but was a pain, as I said. I then painted the wires brown, then drybrushed them a lighter wood color. The strips of masking tape were painted leather. The gaps between the bundles were then filled up with thicker clumps of Woodland scenics flocking.
I painted the craft foam upper layer a desert tan, flocked it with Woodland Scenics Earth, then later added clumps of green flocking to represent sparse vegetation. I think this camp turned out excellent, and will likely do another on a similar theme. I'm sure the fiddly bits can be streamlined or I can learn the technique of bundling wire better.
This camp was sold at Cold Wars to Dave
Schlanger for $25.