Terrain. Something often neglected in wargaming. True, not everyone has the skill, time or desire to make it, and yes, you can buy some phenominally good (albeit expensive) tabletop terrain these days. That said, I do still believe that the best terrain is stuff you've made yourself.
Regardless of your budget and skill level, you can make some useable terrain for your battlefields. Even the example terrain in the original Rogue Trader rulebook was little more than cork tile, some garden rocks and a few blobs of plasticine!
But I'm not here to instruct you on how to make wargames terrain (I'll leave that to the professionals!), I'm just going to show you some of the terrain I've built recently for fantasy era games.
First up, a village well and some boulders;
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| Village well and boulders. |
The well was simply made from some 'bricks' of modelling clay formed into a circle, the frame is just wooden dowel and the tiles are bits of cardboard trimmed into shape. Plus a bit of chain.
The boulders are, well, rocks. These were 'liberated' from the carpark at work, glue-gunned to a piece of mdf and painted.
Next is two Empire style houses I made, which now form part of my local club's terrain collection. They were experiments really, and I intend to build some new ones for myself using the experience I gained from making these. They're just made from shapes of cardboard (glue-gunned together), with lengths of wood (coffee stirrers, looted from various coffee shops) glued on. The walls were then covered in a layer of all purpose filler. Like for the well, the tiles are squares of cardboard with 'chips' cut into them.
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| Town house. |
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| Barn. |
Then we have a more complex piece, which is the town blacksmith's. Because of its open plan design, I couldn't make it from cardboard, so I had to build a wooden frame with wooden flooring, onto which I added a roof. The forge, bellows and anvil were made separately and then glued in.
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| Early stages of construction. |
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| The forge. |
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| Closeup of the forge, showing the hot coals. |
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| The bellows and anvil. |
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| The (mostly) complete Blacksmith's. |
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| The interior. |
I'm thinking of adding more detailing, such as finished weapons and armour lying around, some work benches and some signs hanging outside.
Finally, I have this.
This was formerly a resin dragon figurine of some description (of the kind you'd find in random gift shops), which my girlfriend had kept on a shelf for years gathering dust, and was throwing out. So I glued it to a piece of mdf and added some modelling clay and textured paint around the edge to blend it into the base. Then I painted it, added static grass and glued in some additional foliage to try and give it that overgrown look. I think of it as being some sort of ancient monument or shrine, deep in the wilderness and long forgotten.
So, that's a brief look at some of the terrain I've been building in recent times. Hopefully more soon.
