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How do you guys handle terrain? Do you guys bring your own stuff to your FLGS? Do you use the stores own? Are you just fine with some cups and a green tissue as a board or do you put even more efford in your table then your army? Where do you buy your terrain or what is your favorite DIY piece of terrain?

I have no terrain of my own yet and have to use the stuff my store offers which is not enough for my likings... But on the other hand i got way too much money to spend on my army before i think about getting some of my own... And to be honest it´s way less fun to make my own terrain then to work with my minis...

Well, my gaming group doesn't have terrain so everybody brings their own.

And I actually love making terrain, mainly 'cos mine is a little different. I use as much natural stuff as possible because I don't paint or model as well as others. For example before I moved to Australia, I climbed a tree too cut a branch off and used it as a whole fallen tree.

I'm really lucky. Our store has been around a long time, and has amassed a wonderful collection of terrain by now. I have a small collection of personal stuff, some of which (the stuff that's good enough to use, but valuable or fragile enough that I don't want to leave it lying around the store) I bring with me.

When it comes to terrain, I want two things. First, I want it laid out in a manner which suggest a real battlefield, something that makes sense. Just terrain thrown around haphazardly doesn't do anything for me. Second, I want my terrain to have multiple modes of interactivity. Terrain can obscure, block LOS, be scampered under, be hidden inside of, or climbed on top of. Terrain pieces that can serve more than one of these functions is preferable.

Where to get them? Games Workshop makes some decent terrain. (Their fantasy terrain is much better, in my opinion, than their sci-fi terrain.) Other than that, the best terrain is usually built or scrounged from other things. A good source of scrounged material is aquariums. Fish tank (and sometimes reptile tank) decorations can frequently be used as wargaming terrain, often to great effect!

My group has a couple of great terrain makers.
We have large fabric sheets as the main table, and mostly home-made terrain on top.
This all gets stored in the venue's cupboard.

We've a need for large LoS blocking stuff, but there are sci-fi town buildings, hills and ruins.
Most of this is either cardboard or polystyrene.

I think I'm spoiled. Our local store has 10 tables and more terrain than merchandise. Under each table is racks and racks and racks of terrain. If any company has sold a piece of terrain, there are half a dozen of them available to use, and all painted by the employees.

 Skinnereal wrote:
My group has a couple of great terrain makers.
We have large fabric sheets as the main table, and mostly home-made terrain on top.
This all gets stored in the venue's cupboard.

We've a need for large LoS blocking stuff, but there are sci-fi town buildings, hills and ruins.
Most of this is either cardboard or polystyrene.

Pretty much the exact same situation we have in my group.

I really enjoy making scenery. It allows you to really go wild with your imagination, and it's on a larger scale than a single model, which means a few things:
1) it's much easier than modeling a small model. Even us talentless hacks can scratch build pretty nice terrain.
2) details on terrain is cool, but not necessary at all. A rough paintjob with some drybrushing will do just fine for painting. If you get bored with the work you can always just finish it up and it'll still look very good.

And for me, I feel a great loyalty to my army, so making terrain gives me the opportunity to throw the symbols of my army around the battlefield. My latest piece was a large Sisters of Battle shrine.
Now when we play, we are clearly playing in the back yard of MY army. The others are the intruders.

Having an adult's disposable income helps though. I know you can make some very cheap and really cool scenery, but if you are specific about what you want, it can easily match the cost of a big piece for your army. I don't really want to count on it, but I doubt my shrine cost me less than 50€ to build.

My FLGS has a lot of terrain, but I still have a bunch of my own since I mostly play at home. I actually find the Imperial Sector kits a lot of fun to build. I don't paint them to nearly the quality of the rest of my stuff, mostly just a colored primer coat and some white drybrush to fit with my snow terrain, but I'm pretty happy with it. It adds a lot to the game in my opinion.

That said, for the longest time we just used Monster cans or empty boxes or books or what have you, and still occasionally do so, but we've been slowly swapping it over to modeled terrain.

I can't bring myself to play with anything except modeled terrain. Using pop cans and books is just so lame, it completely ruins the setting and atmosphere of the battle.

For me it's either custom-made stuff, which must adhere to a high standard, or purchased terrain (I use Amera Plastics buildings for my city boards - amazing price and outstanding quality).

It's fairly easy and cheap to make your own. Insulation foam board is soild enough to work as a tough material but also easy to carve with ordinary knives and does not shred into granules like ordinary polystyrene, it's also cheap. I get 4' by 2' boards for about £5 each. You can make a load of hills, plus lots of rocks, rubble, etc out of one board. If you're adventurous you can make all sorts of terrain with the stuff. It's an adventure in itself.

My clubs run their own tourneys, so have their own terrain as a result (necessity). We held our annual 40k one last month (18 players) and have another one coming up in a couple of months.

That said, going to a club with its own terrain has never stopped me making or getting my own for those times I can't GET to a club, or because I needed different terrain for a game not played at that club (Infinity, for example - needs a lot of terrain, and 40k stuff is not generally useful due to swiss cheese syndrome).

Also it tends to deplete the club's stash - so we can either have one infinity game and one fantasy/40k or we can have 6 of fantasy/40k going at a time.

So I bring my own to add to it.

We are fortunate in that we are allowed to put two storage cupboards in our venue for terrain (and we keep our boards behind them - we keep 12 boards in the club).

Foam board, masonite, white glue, paint, flock and sand. These make the base of most of our pieces of terrain. I've seen some crazy home built stuff, and we get very little actual bought terrain.

Really it depends what your looking for. For ruins Pegasus hobbies makes some nice but inexpensive kits. All the ruins kits fit together and can be mixed matched split to really stretch you dollar.

I've bought stuff from eBay user Draka102 and really like it. I also got some generic ruins terrain that's all snap together plastic from some Russian seller. Finally, I got a really good lot of random stuff from some eBay seller clearing out his minis collection. Basically, scour eBay for stuff you like and you'll find items here and there.

I prefer to build my own.

Sometimes i will incorporate GW terrain, but its usually just foam, foam board, hot glue and Hirst blocks.

I love the pegasus gothic stuff, as well as GW's stuff.
Started making my first ever piece of scenery today, have to say it is alot of fun, and quite satisfying.