Making sludge for Sludge

Wargames look so much better, when surrounded with nice terrain. To my shame, I’ve never bothered to create really create nice terrain for my games. Yes, I was fine with stacks of books and pencil cases for hills and walls. And does my unpainted MDF terrain count? My paper printout trees?

Who am I fooling?

As you may know, I’m slowly working away on a Sludge army or two. There are few games that have fired up my imagination as much lately as Sludge has. And with a name like ‘Sludge’, I really cannot put it off anymore: I need to make some terrain for this. The sludgy kind.

To be honest, I’ve always found making terrain daunting. I don’t have large amounts of foam lying around and wouldn’t know where to find it really. No. For this to work for me, I need to start out simple: KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!).

I’ve made a list of things that would spruce up a gaming table and seem easy enough for me to get started on terrain building. Humble beginnings!

• Hasty earthworks
• Redoubts
• Some gabions
• Dead forests
• Log cabins and/or mudbrick buildings (in various states of disrepair)
• Exposed Great Roots

I think most of these speak for themselves. Only the Exposed Great Roots could perhaps do with a brief explanation (Blaster vol. 3, page 26):

“The decaying world is the defining feature of the age. Three hundred years ago, the lands began to break apart. […] At the time, the kings denied their actions had any hand in the matter. Despite countless bleak prophecies, those cruel rulers spurred the arcanist guilds to consume the heartwood of the world tree.

The final crisis was unlike anything that could have been predicted. The entire world broke apart. What remained could be likened to a clot of dried earth held together by strands of spindly roots. Billions were lost as the whole world crumbled apart.”

The idea is that such roots are imbued with magic that can heal anyone, but at a price…

I’m at home with my youngest for a week. And for entertainment, I got some cheap clay from a local store. While we were making some hedgehogs and snowmen, I also took the opportunity to start on a few redoubts and some earthworks!

I started by cutting out some bases for the terrain to go on. I’m actually following tips and tutorials from Napoleonics scenarios:

• Hasty earthworks 
• Shevardino redoubt

After that I added some clay and tiny wooden skewers.

That is it for now. My next step will either see me continue on this terrain or start on one of the others on my list!