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I'm, very soon, going to be building my own table for at home games and want to know what the best way to get terrain is.

Who has the either cheapest or easiest to assemble? Is the battlefield in a box stuff worth it, especially if I can find it cheaper?

Best type of MAT to use?

Where do I get the hay fields, etc?

Modular or one piece?

SOO many questions!

Thanks in advance for all of your help.

Assuming you have a table that can support my solution, I suggest the following modular approach:

1) Go to Home Depot, etc. and get three sheets of MDF (each sheet being 4 feet by 2 feet). Its about 1/8 inch thick and not too heavy. You can lay them on a table and get a 6x4 foot board. I found that is the best balance between storage ability and ease of setting up.
2) Buy a good 6x4 gaming mat - I think the old Citadel mats are the best (you may be able to find on Ebay still).
3) Buy pre-made / pre-painted scenery - I like Crescent Root and Battlefront the best for cost vs. quality. I make my own tree / forests though.
4) Buy or make hills. Hills are important since the solution above is flat and different elevations make games more fun.

Not the coolest or the cheapest, but I think the best mix of both.

P.S. - If you are gong to make scenery, my biggest tip would be to take advantage of the 40% off coupons for Michaels. Some good stuff there. They even have mediocre hobby trees, etc.

Mez

I actually have an old Citadel mat!!!!

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I'll have to look into crescent root.


I would like the coolest, but I don't see myself having one of those SUPER HIGH END HAS EVERY BLADE OF GRASS boards.

 FenrisianStuart21 wrote:
I'm, very soon, going to be building my own table for at home games and want to know what the best way to get terrain is.

Who has the either cheapest or easiest to assemble? Is the battlefield in a box stuff worth it, especially if I can find it cheaper?

Best type of MAT to use?

Where do I get the hay fields, etc?

Modular or one piece?

SOO many questions!

Thanks in advance for all of your help.

Hay fields can be easily made from standard front door mats. As to who you buy terrain from it depends on what theatre of war you are aiming to fight in ? There are plenty of 15mm terrain companies out there and you can either buy the stuff painted or do it yourself.

For a board I would build one as opposed to mat. Yes a mat is easy to roll away but a ready made board will give you so much more detail and is fun to make. Make it in modular sections if space is a problem and hide it under the bed

Hope this helps

Shameless self-promotion time!

I'm actually building several tables worth of terrain for Adepticon this year and have several tutorials posted on my blog. Here's the Dakka P&M link (you can click on the blog links you'd like for more info):
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/615614.page

Anyway, making good terrain is easy but it can be time-consuming. The alterantive is buying terrain which can get expensive fast. But there are a couple of things that are fast, easy and cheap.

1. Hills/moutains/sand dunes. Go to the hardware store and buy a sheet of pink or blue foamboard insulation. A 12'x6' sheet is usually around $20. Buy a tube of construction adhesive rated for foamboard (it will say as much on the package) and a cheap serrated knife from the dollar store. Cut sections from the foamboard, glue together with construction adhesive, sand smooth when dry and paint and flock.

If you're worried about the bottom edges chipping off, use 2mm MDF or even duct tape to base the hill on.

2. Forests. Go on ebay and search through the HO and N scale railroad sections for tree lots for cheap. You can base the trees in clumps on MDF or individually on metal washers. To designate the "area terrain" of woods, cut irregular shapes of brown felt fabric (you can buy 2-3 yards of felt at a fabric store for less than $5).

3. Farm fields. Buy an outdoor jute doormat and cut to size. You can make areas of cut crops with electric hair clippers. You could also get a yard of "teddy bear fur" fabric (sometimes called fake fur) and cut to size. Plowed fields can be represented by areas of cut brown felt.

Here's a bunch of home made terrain. The roads and rivers are 1/4" hardboard cut into 3" and 4" widths. I spraypainted the roads brown, then taped up the center 2" with painters tape and sprayed the edges with green. The rivers have 3" blue felt and 1/2" strips of green felt spray adhesived to the hardboard. One section has grey felt glued to the middle to represent a stone bridge. I have since made one out of cardboard too.

The houses are paper houses built from templates found online. The crop fields are carpet sections.

I bought various colors of felt sections from the craft shop. The felt was 12x9". Large forests were cut out of the whole section while I cut them in half for 6x9" plowed fields (brown felt) or smaller forests.

Spray foam on cardboard painted grey became stone walls and when painted green hedgerows.

I also built fencing sections out of 1/8" dowels, a pack of 40 12" long dowels was $2.99. The were also used to make dug in markers and trenchlines by glueing them in 2-3 layers on cardboard bases.



another paper house


trench sections

I've seen a lot of dirt roads made out of sandpaper: it's quick, easy and looks good just about anywhere.

Roofing shingles make great roads.

 col. krazy kenny wrote:
Roofing shingles make great roads.

I never thought of that but with a little brown paint they can be dirt roads and are just fine for black top roads! Thanks or that idea I was just about to make a bunch of roads this weekend

ChrisRR wrote:

 col. krazy kenny wrote:
Roofing shingles make great roads.

I never thought of that but with a little brown paint they can be dirt roads and are just fine for black top roads! Thanks or that idea I was just about to make a bunch of roads this weekend

They do make roofing shingles in a multitude of colors, including several that would work as dirt roads without painting.

My random tips on putting together a table:

-Battlefield in a box stuff is great quality (usually), comes pre-painted, and is generally pretty affordable. Besides them I'd recommend Kerr & King. I own lots of their Eastern front buildings as well as a pile of their desert buildings (just be warned that you will have to paint them). It was around $100 for enough buildings to have a reasonably well populated table. Musket Miniatures also has some good stuff out there (it's where I got my Eastern Front church from).

-Another suggestion for wheat fields is teddy bear fur from any major fabric store. You'll still get a field and your tanks and infantry will sink into it instead of standing on top of it.

-I know it's not exactly the season but right after x-mas nearly all of the dollar stores I visit have plenty of really cheap miniature pine trees that would be great for woods.

-Bocage is ridiculously easy to make with wire coat hangars and clump foliage.

-Never underestimate how far a few little details can go. Waist high walls, telephone poles, train tracks, arches, courtyards, all of these can add a lot of character onto your board for not a lot of money if you scratch build them or get them cheap.

-Foam hills are super easy (and cheap!) to make with a hot wire cutter.

-Aside from the previously mentioned roofing shingles, caulk spread out over weed mat can make surprisingly good roads.

-one more building recommendation: this EWAR set. I haven't seen it myself but it's gotten pretty good reviews.

Paperterrain.com is a good option to fill up a table with buildings on a budget. This review may be useful:
http://waraltar.blogspot.ie/2011/12/product-review-paperterraincom.html

I got some paper templates for print out. If someone wants them pm me and i will email them to you.

Here's my google drive folder with free paper building templates I've collected from around the net.

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B2MWVpzB0HSIZGEyYnMwcHVuOWc&usp=sharing