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Hey everyone!

So I'm hitting a snag in my Cold War project that I never actually thought about. I have the miniatures I'm gonna use, and the rule set (FoF, and probably CWC thrown in for more large battles), but...I neglected to think about terrain.

Most of the fighting I will be doing will be mid/late 80's Germany and the west coast of the US for a change of pace (think Seattle, and that might give you an idea for what is inspiring me to try that out). I figured for Europe I can use some of my FoW terrain (I game 15mm, and yeah I know 6mm/20mm are better scales for moderns but I like the minis mkay? ) but I'm not quite sure what to use for the US terrain. Obviously it's going to look more dense than Germany but I don't know quite how to represent the style.

Anyone have any suggestions of companies or methods of making decent looking 15mm terrain for the 80's? Once I get it all together and painted I promise an attempt at pictures

Nothing wrong with 15mm.

This may sound super obvious, but probably the first thing is to define what you see as the battlefield. Are communist forces attempting to capture an important air strip? An urban centre? Fighting in the cedar forests?

Are you looking to make terrain? Suggestions on 15mm modern terrain pieces you can buy? If it's terrain you can buy, a google search for "15mm modern terrain" turned up tons of results for me. GameCraft seems to have a pretty cool thing going on with the laser cut MDF.

http://store.gcmshop.com/p/1836/15mm-7-11-store

You should get a load of archive photos of the area you want to model, both aerial and land based.

frozenwastes wrote:Nothing wrong with 15mm.

This may sound super obvious, but probably the first thing is to define what you see as the battlefield. Are communist forces attempting to capture an important air strip? An urban centre? Fighting in the cedar forests?

Are you looking to make terrain? Suggestions on 15mm modern terrain pieces you can buy? If it's terrain you can buy, a google search for "15mm modern terrain" turned up tons of results for me. GameCraft seems to have a pretty cool thing going on with the laser cut MDF.

http://store.gcmshop.com/p/1836/15mm-7-11-store

Ah, thanks for the link!

I guess for Europe I want to look into showing more Northern Germany, since all I've seen for the Cold War recently has been "FULDAGAP-FULDAGAP-FULDAGAP" and I want to try something a bit different and show the Soviets attacking from a direction that NATO wasn't as prepared for. So I actually thought out the board to be a small village (maybe 5-6 buildings spaced out by dirt/cobble roads) that was otherwise surrounded by forests and the very distinctive Northern Marshes

For the US I was planning on a similar deal (for FoF I found you need a lot of terrain as the reaction system can get cluttered if too many things can react at once), but more west coast and dry (having lived out there, I already have a good idea on what that needs to look like)

Kilkrazy wrote:You should get a load of archive photos of the area you want to model, both aerial and land based.

This is also great advice. I don't need US photos so much, as I personally lived in the area I'm trying to base the US table off of, but that'd sure be helpful

Try looking at model railway manufacturers, these companies usually produce everything from many different periods, for 15mm I recommend the N scale as it's about the same. Plus, they are probably cheaper than specialist terrain manufacturers.

I've heard that, but not N scale. N scale seems tiny (around 10mm). Then again, the other way is too big. 15mm was TT scale, but I don't think anyone even makes TT scale anymore. I guess it won't make too big a difference, and I'd rather have smaller terrain (that might end up cheaper)

Look at HO scenery.

It scales to 1/87th, and looks ok with 15mm.