Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today I want to talk to you about something that is more often than not overlooked in the wargaming hobby, particularly in 40k; Terrain. Now, many people like to put a lot of time and effort in to their armies, and that is very admirable, but no matter how good they look when placed on a wooden table with a pile of books as a hill, a few baked bean tins as silos and the odd, crumbling cardboard building... well, lets just say that the overall effect is somewhat diminished. Terrain is often something that is just at the place you game. I think that is a real shame as as often as not, the place your armies are fighting over provides as much to the narrative as the armies themselves or the mission being played. That and the individual pieces can be every bit as interesting, dynamic and detailed as any other miniature in a collection.
So with those points in mind, lets have a look at some great examples of terrain I have been fortunate enough to play on in the past;
Ah, yes. The classic 'Floor War'. Surprisingly useful for Apocalypse games, but the bane of knees and lower backs. For many players, this is the only realistic option of playing at home, which is really unfortunate. Almost as unfortunate as the bored looking chap at the rear of the shot (yes, that is a much younger version of me!) Despite our woefully inadequate playing surface, the terrain was actually of pretty reasonable quality. Built by the guy in red for a school project a few years previous, it was well put together, quite durable and practical in terms of being able to put models on and in it. Most people would have to agree though that there wasn't nearly enough for the sheer amount of area we were using, though in the context of an Apocalypse game, that was less important. We also needed to be able to walk around/on the 'table' to be able to get to our models, so a bit of extra space was handy.
For a depressingly long time, this was our gaming set-up. Still a floor war, but at least with a 6'x4' Realm of Battle Board to give us some texture and elevation. Again, the battlefield was sparsely populated and very much unfinished, with Bastions and Landing pads split into their component parts almost to give us a few more options. The armies themselves were all but painted in this instance, but that only served to highlight just how poor the table we were fighting over was.
Well this was a step up, of sorts. As you can tell, yet another Apocalypse game, but his time we at least had tables, using a realm of battle board as bridges to increase the available area, along with roads as actual bridges! A lot of this terrain belonged to the gaming club at my university; in a bad state of repair, many many years old and with little will to have it updated in any way as the wargamers were a very small contingent. Quite a bit of what you can see was actually provided by myself from my own collection (including about 80% of the models in that line) to try to give us some better coverage. Most of the terrain pieces, like so many I have seen in other places, were assembled and either left like that, awaiting a paint job that would never come or painted quite quickly just to give some colour to the landscape. There was also a few pieces that were bought painted and flocked, such as a couple of the hills you can see in the foreground, but they were incredibly bland and didn't add much to the overall look of the battle field; particularly with the unfinished nature of the rest of the terrain. Now, none of that stopped us enjoying a wonderful game of around 31 thousand points a side, but I can't imagine how awesome it would have felt to be playing over a fully finished table, or at least some battle-matts over the shiny plastic tables.
Jumping ahead in time, we come to one of my current gaming clubs. Over the years, the club has amassed quite a decent haul of terrain, particularly GW's Cities of Death building sets. A few years ago they were reassembled and put onto plasticard bases, as well as getting a reasonably detailed paint job. Everything across all their boards was a uniform blotchy grey, with the skulls painted in bleached bone and a few key details, such as doors, picked out in metallics. Again, that is certainly a step up from the other pictures you've seen above, but it was far from ideal. Meaning no disrespect to the people who did the work originally, but the over attention to detail made them look far too busy, particularly as the ability of the painters was not overly high as a whole and they were trying to do all of the scenery in as little time as possible before a reasonably big event. Over time, the plasticard bases warped as the terrain was quickly and roughly packed away into boxes at the end of the night, panels of the buildings broke off and the older pieces of terrain that had been hastily assembled to provide additional coverage (mostly lengths of barricades and razorwire, with the odd rubble patch and ammo dump) started to show their age and relatively poor construction. From my experience, this is pretty much the level of terrain you get at most gaming stores; something the staff had to do for people to play on in store, so having had the minimum effort applied and then rarely if ever touched up or properly finished. Such a shame, as it really doesn't inspire new players as much as it could.
Ok, you got me; those weren't examples of great terrain. And I think I was being a little generous when I said that I was 'fortunate to have played on'. So let me show you something a little different. Over the last few years, particularly while I was living in Southampton, I have been a semi-regular attendee at tournaments put on by the Brighton Warlords. They are a fantastic gaming club who have terrain that is far above the average, and lots of it. It isn't uncommon for their tournament attendance figures to be in the mid 50s, meaning they need and have around 25-30 tables worth of terrain, at least for 40k. Having never been to their Fantasy tournaments, I don't know if the same is true there, but I can't imagine it is too different. The club is well established and quite mature. Over the years they have continually invested in and improved their terrain, maintaining a combination of GW and FW kits, other manufacturers stuff and scratch-builds often donated by the club members. Below are just four boards I have managed to remember to take photos of (at least, where you can see enough of the board to give you an idea of what's really going on).
Don't get me wrong; I am not saying these tables are perfect, but for a tournament they all provide a nice balance of cover (and different types) whilst also each sticking strongly to the specific theme or style. I'm sure that on a normal club night, most of the tables would have more scenery on them, but even as they are, I have very rarely felt I was lacking in cover, even at events were I was playing with Imperial Guard or Orks. Even when I have it was because I was on a themed table where is made sense that there wasn't necessarily much cover and I got plenty of opportunities to play on other boards were there was much more, so it balanced out over all. Having several styles of board with differing levels of terrain also helped balance out the local meta, with some tables making life easier or harder for certain types of armies, helping to mitigate bad match-ups in many cases (though occasionally making them exponentially worse). Having strong themes also helped when it came to packing up, placing like with like in a labelled box, rather than having to refer to numbers on the underside of the terrain pieces as at my current club. That way, you ensured always have a good table's worth of terrain for your board at the very least.
Lastly I'd like to show you some of the best pieces of scenery (though not whole boards) I have come across on the world wide web. Those of you who frequent BoLS might be familiar with SlickWilly's scratch builds, but here is a brief reminder;
The detail on these builds is beyond impressive. The fact that the roofs and floors are detachable for easy gaming access just magnifies the respect I have for the builder immeasurably. The ultra-realistic look wouldn't work with a lot of 40k armies (I know my Orks in particular are of a more cartoonish bent) but the highlighting is very effective without being over harsh. The physical detail is very full, without being over the top and bogging the model down. The combination of straight edges and more natural curves, particularly on the base of the second building, help tie them into reality far more so than if the base had simply been made bigger to be square and still accommodate everything. I would love to fight over this kind of terrain. Seeing models going head to head over a whole board like this is as evocative as any novel or film. There is more than a little suspension of disbelief involved in our hobby, quite a bit of imagination and abstraction, but settings like this free up our minds from the mundane details so that we can fully flesh out the heroic acts of valour or devious deeds. Not everyone is this talented, obviously, but putting in that little extra effort to go from floor wars with a pair of barely assembled Cities of Death kits to a full table that is 20-30% covered in a variety of types of terrain will pay dividends and inspire you to bring your armies up to match, as well as your regular opponents.
I lied about that being the last thing. I also want to show off a little and make up for my appalling showing of my terrain earlier. When talking about my club's terrain, I tried to remember to use the past tense. Not sure if I succeeded but there was good reason. Over the past few weeks, one of my friends and I have been beginning to slowly work out way through the club's terrain. This is for several reasons, including the fact that we will be hosting the 2014 Student Nationals and really want to make a good show of it. In part that means increasing the number of tables of scenery we have available, as well as update, repair and improve what the club has in its stores.
Once again, I've managed to hide myself in the photo. So this is what we started with for an Adeptus Mechanicus themed board. Abandoned and ruined, obviously. Well, actually this is after a day of stripping out the plasticard bases and repairing broken buildings, along with adding additional battle-damage to break up the straight lines and uniformity at the edges of the CoD building tiles. We also added new wooden bases to help make the buildings more sturdy and (hopefully) so they will last a bit longer. We also did a more thorough job of adding sand to texture the bases, rather than the very patchy job that had been done at the previous update.
And after another few hours, here is what we finished up with. To give you an idea of scale, that table it about 2.5'x4', so a little over a quarter of the size of a standard gaming table. We tried to theme the terrain set with the Mechanicus red complimenting a desert base (to match as gaming mat belonging to the club). With a thorough base coat, a little drybrushing and details done in a very simplistic way in metallics, the whole project took around 30 man-hours and was completed over a weekend between 2 of us with a couple of helpers here and there.
Neither of those miniatures are painted up to 'Eavy Metal standard, but they do a good job of showing why we only did what we did painting-wise on the terrain. It provides a reason for them to be there, a backdrop for them without drawing the attention away from the armies themselves. Since painting this board, nearly ever member of the club (including those who exclusively play board- and/or card-games) have come up to us and said how much better the terrain looks. None of it was hard or particularly laborious, but it has certainly made a difference.
We were quite fortunate to have a load of GW kits to work with, but in order to increase the number of tables of terrain we had, we knew immediately that we couldn't just use those and buy more; the club quite simply doesn't have the budget! Our solution was to compliment the CoD kits with scratch builds using cheap materials. Here, you can see what I did with the quite badly damaged Shrine of the Aquila set. Using cheap insulation extruded polystyrene sheets, I truned what was all ready a fairly sizeable kit into a huge centre piece. General consensus seems to be that a Warlord Titan took a step through it accidentally. This formed the central focus of a ruined shrine world table, themed in a regal blue and ash grey. Whilst both this and the Mechanicum board are highly different, they still evoke that Imperial Gothic feeling.
For our latest board, we decided to do as much as possible from scratch. For the other boards, we had a lot of GW kits to work with, and whilst the shrine world had been a great way of showing what we could do with cheap materials, we really wanted to show what we could do without resorting to GW kits. Again, this was more in response to the pressing need to build around 40 tables worth of terrain on a tight budget in time for Nationals than just wanting to show off, but it was also nice to test out our hobby mettle. The whole board above cost less than £10 to make, excluding the Space Marine statue and the columns the Imperial Army statues are on. That £10 is all the glues, wooden bases, foam and the trees, with spares left over. In fact, we got enough MDF wood for the bases for around 15 tables worht of terrain, cut into roughly 2'x1' section for a little over £5 from a local DIY store. The foam comes in packs of ten 750mm x 600mm x 6mm sheets for around £30. We used slightly more than one of those sheets here, and that was with a surprisingly high amount of wastage (which will go in to other projects... we try not to throw anything away). Yes, we could do with a few more bits and the trees need to go on bases, but we are well on out way, with only about 12 hours work done so far and for almost no money at all.
The folly bridge makes for a great LOS blocking terrain piece, but is far more characterful than a simple wall, and quite different from your standard ruin. As you can see, smaller transport vehicles can easily be placed on it (with a hidden wooden structure underneath to take the load) and even tall Space Marine models can fit under the arches with a little persuasion.
Again, the gatehouse provides a decent sized LOS blocking centre piece and has a wooden internal construction to take the loads placed upon it (particularly in storage. A few GW bits have been added for additional detail, but the majority if simple carved foam. At the sides, small walls have been added to connect to a series of other wall sections that can be arranged in more or less any pattern.
The idea behind this board is the gardens just inside/outside of the gate house to an Imperial Palace, or the grand house of an Inquisitor/Rouge Trader. The bases will be lush greens, the building features polished stone. Admittedly it has all been a little abandoned... that happens in a galaxy where there is only war! As I said, there is a little more to come but this does hopefully give you at least some idea of what we have planned. I'll make sure I share some pics of the finished board once we are done.
One final note as to why I think you should do your own terrain (and yes, this time it will be a final note!): You get to do things that wouldn't normally fit scale-wise with anything short of gargantuan creatures, like this
Matt
Today I want to talk to you about something that is more often than not overlooked in the wargaming hobby, particularly in 40k; Terrain. Now, many people like to put a lot of time and effort in to their armies, and that is very admirable, but no matter how good they look when placed on a wooden table with a pile of books as a hill, a few baked bean tins as silos and the odd, crumbling cardboard building... well, lets just say that the overall effect is somewhat diminished. Terrain is often something that is just at the place you game. I think that is a real shame as as often as not, the place your armies are fighting over provides as much to the narrative as the armies themselves or the mission being played. That and the individual pieces can be every bit as interesting, dynamic and detailed as any other miniature in a collection.
So with those points in mind, lets have a look at some great examples of terrain I have been fortunate enough to play on in the past;
Ah, yes. The classic 'Floor War'. Surprisingly useful for Apocalypse games, but the bane of knees and lower backs. For many players, this is the only realistic option of playing at home, which is really unfortunate. Almost as unfortunate as the bored looking chap at the rear of the shot (yes, that is a much younger version of me!) Despite our woefully inadequate playing surface, the terrain was actually of pretty reasonable quality. Built by the guy in red for a school project a few years previous, it was well put together, quite durable and practical in terms of being able to put models on and in it. Most people would have to agree though that there wasn't nearly enough for the sheer amount of area we were using, though in the context of an Apocalypse game, that was less important. We also needed to be able to walk around/on the 'table' to be able to get to our models, so a bit of extra space was handy.
Well this was a step up, of sorts. As you can tell, yet another Apocalypse game, but his time we at least had tables, using a realm of battle board as bridges to increase the available area, along with roads as actual bridges! A lot of this terrain belonged to the gaming club at my university; in a bad state of repair, many many years old and with little will to have it updated in any way as the wargamers were a very small contingent. Quite a bit of what you can see was actually provided by myself from my own collection (including about 80% of the models in that line) to try to give us some better coverage. Most of the terrain pieces, like so many I have seen in other places, were assembled and either left like that, awaiting a paint job that would never come or painted quite quickly just to give some colour to the landscape. There was also a few pieces that were bought painted and flocked, such as a couple of the hills you can see in the foreground, but they were incredibly bland and didn't add much to the overall look of the battle field; particularly with the unfinished nature of the rest of the terrain. Now, none of that stopped us enjoying a wonderful game of around 31 thousand points a side, but I can't imagine how awesome it would have felt to be playing over a fully finished table, or at least some battle-matts over the shiny plastic tables.
Jumping ahead in time, we come to one of my current gaming clubs. Over the years, the club has amassed quite a decent haul of terrain, particularly GW's Cities of Death building sets. A few years ago they were reassembled and put onto plasticard bases, as well as getting a reasonably detailed paint job. Everything across all their boards was a uniform blotchy grey, with the skulls painted in bleached bone and a few key details, such as doors, picked out in metallics. Again, that is certainly a step up from the other pictures you've seen above, but it was far from ideal. Meaning no disrespect to the people who did the work originally, but the over attention to detail made them look far too busy, particularly as the ability of the painters was not overly high as a whole and they were trying to do all of the scenery in as little time as possible before a reasonably big event. Over time, the plasticard bases warped as the terrain was quickly and roughly packed away into boxes at the end of the night, panels of the buildings broke off and the older pieces of terrain that had been hastily assembled to provide additional coverage (mostly lengths of barricades and razorwire, with the odd rubble patch and ammo dump) started to show their age and relatively poor construction. From my experience, this is pretty much the level of terrain you get at most gaming stores; something the staff had to do for people to play on in store, so having had the minimum effort applied and then rarely if ever touched up or properly finished. Such a shame, as it really doesn't inspire new players as much as it could.
Ok, you got me; those weren't examples of great terrain. And I think I was being a little generous when I said that I was 'fortunate to have played on'. So let me show you something a little different. Over the last few years, particularly while I was living in Southampton, I have been a semi-regular attendee at tournaments put on by the Brighton Warlords. They are a fantastic gaming club who have terrain that is far above the average, and lots of it. It isn't uncommon for their tournament attendance figures to be in the mid 50s, meaning they need and have around 25-30 tables worth of terrain, at least for 40k. Having never been to their Fantasy tournaments, I don't know if the same is true there, but I can't imagine it is too different. The club is well established and quite mature. Over the years they have continually invested in and improved their terrain, maintaining a combination of GW and FW kits, other manufacturers stuff and scratch-builds often donated by the club members. Below are just four boards I have managed to remember to take photos of (at least, where you can see enough of the board to give you an idea of what's really going on).
Don't get me wrong; I am not saying these tables are perfect, but for a tournament they all provide a nice balance of cover (and different types) whilst also each sticking strongly to the specific theme or style. I'm sure that on a normal club night, most of the tables would have more scenery on them, but even as they are, I have very rarely felt I was lacking in cover, even at events were I was playing with Imperial Guard or Orks. Even when I have it was because I was on a themed table where is made sense that there wasn't necessarily much cover and I got plenty of opportunities to play on other boards were there was much more, so it balanced out over all. Having several styles of board with differing levels of terrain also helped balance out the local meta, with some tables making life easier or harder for certain types of armies, helping to mitigate bad match-ups in many cases (though occasionally making them exponentially worse). Having strong themes also helped when it came to packing up, placing like with like in a labelled box, rather than having to refer to numbers on the underside of the terrain pieces as at my current club. That way, you ensured always have a good table's worth of terrain for your board at the very least.
Lastly I'd like to show you some of the best pieces of scenery (though not whole boards) I have come across on the world wide web. Those of you who frequent BoLS might be familiar with SlickWilly's scratch builds, but here is a brief reminder;
The detail on these builds is beyond impressive. The fact that the roofs and floors are detachable for easy gaming access just magnifies the respect I have for the builder immeasurably. The ultra-realistic look wouldn't work with a lot of 40k armies (I know my Orks in particular are of a more cartoonish bent) but the highlighting is very effective without being over harsh. The physical detail is very full, without being over the top and bogging the model down. The combination of straight edges and more natural curves, particularly on the base of the second building, help tie them into reality far more so than if the base had simply been made bigger to be square and still accommodate everything. I would love to fight over this kind of terrain. Seeing models going head to head over a whole board like this is as evocative as any novel or film. There is more than a little suspension of disbelief involved in our hobby, quite a bit of imagination and abstraction, but settings like this free up our minds from the mundane details so that we can fully flesh out the heroic acts of valour or devious deeds. Not everyone is this talented, obviously, but putting in that little extra effort to go from floor wars with a pair of barely assembled Cities of Death kits to a full table that is 20-30% covered in a variety of types of terrain will pay dividends and inspire you to bring your armies up to match, as well as your regular opponents.
I lied about that being the last thing. I also want to show off a little and make up for my appalling showing of my terrain earlier. When talking about my club's terrain, I tried to remember to use the past tense. Not sure if I succeeded but there was good reason. Over the past few weeks, one of my friends and I have been beginning to slowly work out way through the club's terrain. This is for several reasons, including the fact that we will be hosting the 2014 Student Nationals and really want to make a good show of it. In part that means increasing the number of tables of scenery we have available, as well as update, repair and improve what the club has in its stores.
For our latest board, we decided to do as much as possible from scratch. For the other boards, we had a lot of GW kits to work with, and whilst the shrine world had been a great way of showing what we could do with cheap materials, we really wanted to show what we could do without resorting to GW kits. Again, this was more in response to the pressing need to build around 40 tables worth of terrain on a tight budget in time for Nationals than just wanting to show off, but it was also nice to test out our hobby mettle. The whole board above cost less than £10 to make, excluding the Space Marine statue and the columns the Imperial Army statues are on. That £10 is all the glues, wooden bases, foam and the trees, with spares left over. In fact, we got enough MDF wood for the bases for around 15 tables worht of terrain, cut into roughly 2'x1' section for a little over £5 from a local DIY store. The foam comes in packs of ten 750mm x 600mm x 6mm sheets for around £30. We used slightly more than one of those sheets here, and that was with a surprisingly high amount of wastage (which will go in to other projects... we try not to throw anything away). Yes, we could do with a few more bits and the trees need to go on bases, but we are well on out way, with only about 12 hours work done so far and for almost no money at all.
The idea behind this board is the gardens just inside/outside of the gate house to an Imperial Palace, or the grand house of an Inquisitor/Rouge Trader. The bases will be lush greens, the building features polished stone. Admittedly it has all been a little abandoned... that happens in a galaxy where there is only war! As I said, there is a little more to come but this does hopefully give you at least some idea of what we have planned. I'll make sure I share some pics of the finished board once we are done.
One final note as to why I think you should do your own terrain (and yes, this time it will be a final note!): You get to do things that wouldn't normally fit scale-wise with anything short of gargantuan creatures, like this
Matt
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