Pimping My Terrain

Whilst I haven't been in the mood to paint figures, I have had the urge to upgrade my terrain a bit, as some of it I haven't been happy with for sometime and others just needed a bit of a lift. With a lot of it being required for October's Cotswold Wargames Day game, I thought I'd make a start so once finished, I can move over to the figures. Luckily the latter are pretty much there, with a few units and command stands being required, famous last words! 

So with some free time in the offing, I thought I'd set up a quick game to christen the games room but also to layout my terrain and slowly check that I have everything I need for the aforementioned CWD games. 

A 4' x 4' table set up this afternoon for a fairly generic meeting engagement. Setting everything up has been informative as certainly anything bigger than this would be too tight a squeeze, as expected. Still, first World problems and all that!

My ploughed fields I've had for ages, made from door mat with grit applied over it to hide the rather obvious material look which is more apparent with 10mm and below I've found. They looked rather flat so I simply highlighted the ridges to make them pop more and think they work pretty well.

I made these European style fields last year I think and looking at them recently, they looked to clean and fresh and a bit bland. So I simply drybrushed to flock to give them a bit more depth. Not perfect but they work for the moment. If I really wanted to, I would painted the flock and then highlight up etc, but to me that's a step too far.

Finally after doing a sample last year, I added 'yellow sawdust' railway flock to my door mat cornfields and am really happy with the result. Very easy to do, you just need plenty of pva glue and space as it can get messy and you need to leave it to dry very well before shaking off the excess flock.

Another highlighted flocked field. I decided to try adding some yellow highlights to the top left portion, which sort of looks OK but is not that great to be honest. 

This fenced garden has been waiting for some static grass for several years now so whilst I had the pva glue out, it was a quick 5 minute job. Very happy with the result.

Some vineyards I've had for years now but thought I'd show them as they rarely make it onto the table. Maybe this year at the show I can find a space for them...

Railway mat that was Summer grass or something akin to that, that is meant to look a bit parched. It never quite clicked for me so I simply drybrushed it and added some highlights so it looks like bare earth.

Another bare earth terrain photo.

My wooded bases never came out as I wanted them to, as the flock dried back once I'd added some diluted pva to it to stop it shedding everywhere, leaving bare patches that looked wrong. If I'd gritted the whole base this wouldn't have happened, so leasson learnt. Another layer flock (3 colours mixed together) solved the problem.

The same base sans trees and I can use it for rough ground or simply to break up the table as I see fit.

Another railway model mat, this time Spring green I think. Again a bit flat and bright to look at so some subtle drybrushing and highlights have lifted it, which I'm happy with.

The same mat but trying a different colour and effect to make it look more rough and ready. Not perfect but lessons learnt for future terrain building.

So that's it. Hopefully I'll get a game in tonight or tomorrow whilst SWMBO is out for the morning. AAR to follow in due course.

TTFN.