Basic Wargaming Battlefields

With the little free time I’ve had over the last few weeks being put to getting my latest model purchases painted, I completely overlooked a core part of tabletop wargames. Terrain!

It’s been a few years and the handfuls of hills and woods I had have been stuffed into so many boxes over the years that I doubt they would be any good, even if I knew where to look for them. I don’t have the time to make any proper terrain so we’ll be taking some shortcuts.

For the trees, I bought some pre-made model railway trees (a mix of pine and deciduous). They are pretty basic but do the job of representing a forest.

No time to go twisting wire and wrapping it to make realistic birch trees so we’re sticking these to some hardboard scraps I had gathering dust, covering the base in flock and calling it a day.

To provide some flexibility, I’ve mounted some of the trees as a group on a single base and some on individual bases. This allows me to gather every tree together into one big forest or scatter them around the table to make small groves.

The other core staple of a basic battlefield is a hill (or two) to die on. Although cutting some polystyrene sheets into rough ovals and covering them in flock is a quick method for a basic hill, there is an easier one that works with my solution for a gaming board. Books.

Back in the day, I had some proper terrain boards to game on. No time to make new ones so I bought a cheap, green table cloth to represent the grassy fields. Stack a couple of books under the table cloth (an army book for the first tier with a small novel for a second tier works) and, voila, instant hill.

It's not pretty, but it’s a short-term fix that I intend to correct at the earliest opportunity. With the pine trees added, it will look less empty.

I also found some bits of broken wall from an old attempt at creating a ruined temple when I was moving stuff around. The parts themselves weren’t good enough to make ruins so I stuck them onto some hardboard and half buried them in flock.

Now, back to painting. I’m not liking how my snakemen have turned out so need to have a rethink on the colour scheme.