Terrain for the club

One thing that has annoyed me about TAG for some tim now is the fact that if we want to game there Kent and I have to bring our own terrain, and pay for the privelage of doping so. We both have reasonable collections of terrain but we would like to be able to go to the club, have decent terrain to use and so have one less hassle to take care of to get a game. To my mind a wargaming club should be about pooling resources to provide best looking terrain and tables possible- providing a gaming experience that people may not be able to get at home.

Although some of the28mm sci-fii terrain at TAG is suitable (and there is now some fantasic terrain that has been built by the local sci-fi gamers) there is little in 15mm or suitable for WWII gaming/  FoW. It is nearly a decade since I started the club and over time the original FoW terrain (much of it originally donated by Kent and me) has been damaged and destroyed. In the past few years little has been done to build up a collection of suitable (robust) terrain for 15mm/28mm hisorics. In the end we stopped supporting TAG and TAGCON (an event I started and ran for its first 5 years) as we felt that not enough was being done to support us and .

The aim of Day of Days this year is to rectify this. We are going to use any profits from the competition to start rebuilding the terrain collection for historics. So to start the ball rolling I've decided to make some terrain and donate to TAG.  I'd like us to be able to get enough terrain for Western European and and North African themed tables. We need a lot of stuff including the basics- rivers, woods/trees, roads, walls, hedges, table cloths etc.

On Friday I picked up a door mat ($12.50) and used some MDF and bark to start making some generic terrain.The door mat is suitable for 4x fields (each 20cm x 30cm) and I've made 4x woods/rough going bases using some MDF I had lying round.

 The trees are some of my woodland scenics ones. I am on the lookout for some robust trees suitable of  the club- they need to be able to take a few knocks.  I might end up making some out of wire yet, we will see.

This terrain took a couple of hours to make and will do for the club.  The MDF was covered in PVA and sprinkled in sand, then once dry a watered down layer of PVA was added to seal the sand and stop it wearing off. The base was undercoated black, then dry brshed dark brown with a final tan colour dry brush, then some static grass added.Simple but it will do the job.

 

Rough Terrain for the desert/African themed games- barkchip + plaster. The key, as I've mentioned before is to seal the barkchip with a watered down layer of PVA which dries into a tough, flexible cover- failure to seal the bark results in the barkchip flaking over time.

 

Craig