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Terrain Thursdays

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Getting Started

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From page 4 of How to make Wargames Terrain (emphasis added):

Rather than launch off into making something large and complex, we recommend you start off small. You only really need two to three pieces of terrain to make a battlefield interesting. You can pick any pieces you like from the many examples in this book but a good place to start is to make a wood, an obstacle of some kind and a hill. Then you can quickly see how useful terrain is.

 

"a wood"

Rummaging in the hobby horde, I started with a couple of small pieces.

1 – I have some plasticard left over from a basing project from years ago and I’m not a big fan of it as a material so I’m happy to get it used about out the of way. I took this awkward piece, cut it in two and beveled the edge with a hobby knife.

2 – I have a full box of Woodland Scenics fir tree armatures that I bought for a Frostgrave table but I’m happy to use some for a Middle-Earth/generic green table mini woodland. Superglued to the plasticard and the armatures were twisted but not glued into their bases.

3 – textured the bases with some cork chunks for big rocks and a mixture of ballast and fine sand for the rest. Don’t ask me why I hadn’t made a texture paint yet… I don’t have a good answer.

The plasticard was split in two to make a small stand and a larger oneThe plasticard was split in two to make a small stand and a larger one
Ready for texturing the baseReady for texturing the base

"an obstacle of some kind"

I decided on some small hedges for my obstacles at this stage. I wanted some bog standard 6″ pieces so here’s how it went:

1 – cut plasticard to size and bevel the edges

2 – trim the ends off tongue depressors and glue together in pairs

3 – glue the tongue depressors to the plasticard.

 

Getting Started

Next up was the foliage. I don’t have any scouring pads in the house at the moment and I went looking for the little bit steel wool I know is here some where when I stumbled upon the foam from a boxed malt whisky. As any good gamer should, I’d kept this from when we cleared my dad’s house after he died, safe in the knowledge that I’d find a use for it some day. There’s going to be a fair amount of that in this project.

4 – cut strips of foam and slice it down the middle almost all the way through.

5 – glue it onto the hedge skeleton inside out so that the surface is a bit rougher for it comes to flocking later

6 – texture the base by adding in a few cork chunks for rocks and using fine sand on the rest

The foam was very smooth on the outside so I made splits to turn it inside outThe foam was very smooth on the outside so I made splits to turn it inside out
Quick textureQuick texture

At this point both of these are ready to prime. Everything will get sprayed with Army Painter Fur Brown. I thought about using black but the truth is I have a can of the brown sitting and I hate waste 🙂

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