Fast Terrain

New and different Terrain is a great way to spice up your playing area. Whether you are just beginning and want to get rid of that hill you made out of a jacket and books, or you’ve been playing for a while, but are getting sick of always playing on the Hills and Woods table, you can do something about it. Terrain is easier to make than many people think. I will list a number of ideas below, and any tools and pieces you will need to make them.

Ice Fields

Since most of the Wargaming I’ve seen is done on wooded hills, this has a nice visual appeal to it. Although you can use a white felt cloth as the base for this, if you can find light fixture covers (like for fluorescent lights) in the “Cracked Ice” style, those are even better. The light fixtures give a hard surface to play on and look right for an ice floe. The only tool you need for this is a Wonder Cutter, or some variation on the heated wire Styrofoam cutting tool. These are generally available for about 10-15 bucks and make cutting Styrofoam very easy. The only other pieces you’ll need for an ice field are chunks of Styrofoam. You can carve the Styrofoam chunks into ice blocks for igloos and fortifications, or you can make them look more natural. One great way to make the Styrofoam ice floes look natural is to hold your Wonder Cutter at an angle (I like 45 degrees) and wiggle it back and forth as you cut along the terrain piece. A lot of wiggling produces jagged edges, whereas less just gives a windswept look and breaks up the smooth edges you’ll get otherwise. Big ice crystals also look good. You can make these by cutting roughly square columns out of the Styrofoam and then shaving the ends down into a squarish point that looks somewhat like a pyramid. Make different lengths and thicknesses of these, then put them in clusters together, sticking up out of an ice floe, or just sitting on their own on the cracked ice. One interesting scenario idea to use with an Ice Field is Thin Ice. The way we play it, we use any flat area of the board (i.e.: the cracked ice stuff between the ice floes and crystals) as thin ice. Any time that a model ends a turn on thin ice, it rolls a die. On a 1, it falls through and is removed from the game. Add 1 to the roll for Vehicles. If you wish, you can also use markers to indicate where something fell through, making that area now considered deep water and thus impassable except to skimmers.

Alien Caves

If you want a really different look for your gaming terrain, especially if you like fighting in enclosed areas, try making some alien caves. You will need a flat board to support this, I’d recommend thin plywood in whatever size you want the cave complex to be. You’ll also need some Great Stuff or other expanding foam (available at hardware and home stores) and a pen of some kind. Start by marking out roughly where you want the walls of your caves to be, so you know where to spray the foam when you get started and you don’t end up making a bunch of caves with blocked off entrances. Leave spaces for some medium range shooting and some large melees, since that’s usually what people want from fighting in close quarters. When you’ve got the complex drawn out, start spraying the foam around. With very tight quarters, one can should cover about a 3x3 area. Remember that the foam will expand, so spray a little in an area at a time, then move on to another area so you can watch the first stuff expand and see how far it goes. 

Alien Flora and Fauna

For a little variation on your woodlands, visit your local craft shop or pet store. They usually have a variety of plastic plants, whether for aquariums or arrangements. Although the flowers usually don’t look good to me, the regular leafy plants, considering the scale of the game, can make strange looking trees and bushes. Vine types can also be used for brambles or like razorwire obstacles. Generally, you will just need something to cut the plants with, since they usually come on long stems or in big bunches that need to be cut down to fit the scale. If you want to use them without putting a base on them, you might want to put something to weight them down. A penny or two glued to the underside usually works for small trees, and is fairly cheap as well. You can also find odd things to use for Deathworld terrain, such as a Carnivore Lair, which will really spice up most games. Anything that has a hole in it would be good for this, such as an odd seashell (keep the scale of the game in mind, that little conch shell is 20 feet high and about 30 feet wide!) or a bird’s nest or something else entirely. The point is, you want to find things that look really different from your standard terrain, so that it will be different. Unless, of course, you don’t have any standard terrain, then grab what interests you and go with it!

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