Here I present a very simple yet effective way of adding terrain items to your battlefield. Use pasta.
During a recent meal I had a pasta type known as Campanelle. This pasta is very reminiscent of a plant and reminded me specifically of those plants (name escapes me) that lure insects into a central pool of liquid to be digested. I thought those along with some Rigati (like macaroni only a bit straighter) could be turned into terrain elements for use in my games of Combat Zone.

Stage 1

First up I separated out the pasta and used my hot glue gun to stick two Campanelle pieces to a base (in this case 2p coins). For the Rigati I stuck five to six pieces to a base to form a kind of sea urchin. I was happy to use quite a bit of glue to add extra support to the pasta and once painted will form part of the root base of the plant.

Stage 2

For the base colour I wanted something that would blend into the dusty brown scheme I've been using with the rest of my Combat Zone terrain. So for the Campanelle I started with A chocolate brown. The tube like Rigati went a traditional green, but being tubes they were still going to be alienesque.

Stage 3

At this point I'm going to concentrate on the Campanelle paint scheme becasue the Rigati one was just a simple case of dry brushing on lighter stages towards the top of each tube(see picture at bottom of the page).
Continuing on with the Campanelle I then added to the rim of each piece a edge of dwarven flesh.

Stage 4

To the edge I also added some yellow to give some contrast. I wasn't worried about adding colour to the main body of the plant at this point. Just playing around with the crown of the plant.

Stage 5

A bit of drybrushing across the whole plant came next. Perhaps a bit heavy handed but I wanted to tone down the yellow a bit. I used the base colour chocolate brown and mixed in some of the dwarven flesh to lighten it a bit.

Stage 6

At this point I felt the middle part of the plant needed something. So a quick look at some plant colour schemes online and I applied a simple drybrush of buff coming out of the plant.

Stage 7

The last stage just involved doing the base and I also decided to cover the plants with a satin brush on varnish. Mainly to give them a glossy wet look.

The Final Results

And so to the final result. Along with the tube plants I was quite pleased with the finished pieces. Next time I might try a brighter colour but these cost almost nothing to produce and will be a good edition to my Combat Zone terrain.

Germy