GW Roughcoat

released August 20006

In the summer of 2006, GW released their roughcoat(rc) basing spray, in conjunction with the Cities of Death scenery models and rule book.

I got my hands on a can, and thought I'd try it out, and pass along my observations.

	The first piece to try it out on was a blank piece of plasticard. Seemed logical enough. Here it is with a coat of the rc spray.
	and a close up of the surface.
	I let photoshop "auto adjust" the picture, and the grain comes out a bit better here.
	here's the back of the same piece with a coat of black primer (also GW) as a control.
	and now back to the rc coated side. See any difference? I don't either - but you can feel it to the touch.
	here's a cross section view, and again the texture is not clear to the view.
	now here is the rc side with a fairly heavy fortress gray drybrush. Don't nitpick the brush strokes.
	and the back side (control side) also hit the same way (well, at least the top half.   You can see a bit of textured difference in the two, and again, you can feel it.
	and a final cross section view. The grain here is visable after the drybrushing.

Now for something with detail. As the rc spray came out of the cities of death summer, I decided to use a busted piece of the building sprue as a test.

	Here is the city sprue with a coat of rc on it
	and the back, control side (flat black primer, poorly applied)
	The rc side with a coat of flat black primer
	and with the drybrush of fortress gray. On this piece, you can see the rc stand out a bit more (as well as the mold flash on the left hand side of the piece)
	in comparison, here is the back side, also with a drybrush of fortress gray.
	here is a close up of the front (rc) side of the piece. In this, the texture is readily visable.
	and the back (non-rc) side.

My thoughts on this? The roughcoat does add texture to the model - but how that affects the final product is a bit uncertain - the question is, does the roughcoat provide value for its cost? At this time, it's hard to answer. I think the casual gamer can pass this product, and spend the money on a blister instead, but folks who are a bit more in tune with the results of their work will find uses for it.

Multiple coats might build up texture, but I think for terrain, this is not going to duplicate concrete as well as other methods, such as my concrete forumula. It is my opinion that for models to "pop" visually on the tabletop, certain aspects need to be a bit bigger than real life. Aspects like highlighting the edges of a marine's armor, make the models stand out, and in the case of scenery, texture needs to be similarily larger than life in order to stand out.

Best to me though, is that even though after spraying what I thought was a heavy coat, the details on the building piece were not buried after it dried. This means it may be useful on vehicle or infantry models as well, although that will require a bit more experimentation. I'll add to this page as I use the product more.

1 August 2006. I hope you find this useful. - Scarpia

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