28mm Scale Terrain

In my head there are three distinct aspects to tabletop wargaming; rules, miniatures, and terrain.  You get much more fun from a game if you have an interesting table, especially skirmish games.

First up a bunch of scratch built stuff for SAGA, which uses a selection of pieces rather than ‘scatter’, So here we a couple of areas of marsh land, some rocky cover and a small wood.  The marsh was cheap fake moss cover over a bit of foam board.

The wood is made of actual twigs and some commercial terrain lichen with roots of modelling putty on foam board, finished by the same green flock I use on my miniature bases.

The rocky ground is off cuts of XPS foam, sprayed with special primer and painted then stuck on foam board and finished off with dried coffee grounds and flock

Next up, a small hill, from XPS foam shaped by a hot wire cutter stuck on foam board, and finished with paint, flock, rocks, and tufts

Next, instead of a field I decided to do individual hedges that can be used separately too.  These are rubberised coir, stuck to foam board, and finished off with paint, dried coffee grounds mixed in PVA, and flock.  With a few stumps and rocks for fun.

This was followed up by the realisation that they didn’t form a square very well and didn’t give any access, so I added corner pieces and more hedges, some with gaps.

I used the same techniques to do an area of scrub land

Next was the table itself, thankfully my wife got into the spirit of this and knocked up this 6’ x 4’ beauty with a river edge and a beachhead built in for when needed.  It also folds nicely to a 3’ x 3’ for 5LB games.

So, now I had the sea, and the idea of a campaign with the Vikings sailing between hostile lands, I went looking for some boats.  First up is the Emhar 9001 Gokstad 9th Century Viking Ship 1:72 Plastic Kit.  It comes with a horrible plastic sail but my much better half did this lovely fabric one.

I also found this Asgard Rising 3D print, which comes with a full hull or a waterline hull which looks lovely on the sea

That pretty much did me for the SAGA games but when I started playing 5LB I needed more “scatter” terrain.  This made me happy that I did the hedges separately but also lead me to make separate rocks, trees and bushes like these

So that’s the basics, but a number of 5LB battles involve a ‘camp’ so a little 3D set comes in handy

There’s also plenty of room for some stuff that’s really just scenery rather than terrain.  These two Vesna Alchemist sets were fun to paint up and look great on the table

Then there is this great little Blacksmith scene from Reconquer Designs

Also Reconquer Design is this delightful chicken coop set, those chickens are ridiculously small!

This is an Oxen pen, some unnamed thing bought for me off Amazon.  When I was given it, I realised it is 32mm scaled so the oxen are pretty large, but this gave me an idea and now they are Aurochs instead.  Go ahead and look that up, don’t worry, I’ll wait ;-)

Next was an idea to make my own bridge, and this time I thought to take a photo at the raw stage.  

I am very happy with the result, it blends so well with my other stuff and is nice and rustic compared to things you can buy.

More wooded areas, one on a low hill, I’m enjoying making these trees, hopefully they will stand up to multiple games okay.

Buildings make great scenery, so I wanted to try my hand at that next.  These are a bit rough and only useful for getting in the way of lines of sight, but I learnt some things in the process that will make the next ones better

The walls are foam board, the wooden beams and door are cheap craft sticks, the roof is strands of hessian pulled from a woven 

This other house uses the same basic foam board build but then covers it in sticks as cladding and little individually cut shingles.  No idea why I thought that was a good idea, but hey it looks nice.

I also went back to my old friends the hedges and did a couple more with gates