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A life long modeler, but only recently a mini enthusiast. I'm finishing up the Open Fire set and am now looking to terrain.

Other than a 4x6 grass mat, not sure where to start. Whats a bare minimum in terms of buildings, hedges, roads, trees etc?

Try Hobby Lobby or a Train Store load up on basing materials some tree kits avaible in that scale are not that exspensive also green fuzzy dish pads from dollar stores cut in strips and flocked and lichens make great hedges. As far as terrain its your board you could as little as much as you want i prefer pretty dense

A cheap way to break up a gaming table is with fields. A plain Coir doormat cut into various shapes is a cheap and easy way to simulate cornfields. Various shades of carpet tiles can also be used for grass and ploughed fields.

I would strongly recommend some roads. Assuming you are playing games in NW Europe roads are key features and really bring a table to life. Things like Crossroads also make excellent objectives. You can get professionally made ones or make your own depending on your budget. Cloth or Felt strips will do an adequate job to start with but I think it's worth making them look good in the long term. I made my own from floor tiles, sand paint and flock. It was cheap but time consuming. But I'm very happy with the results.

With regarding to buildings, you will need at least a few. Most battles center around some sort of town. The MDF ones from 4ground and the like are a very nice and reasonably priced way to get started.

100% on the Doormat, I went to poundland recently and got 5 for £5. Sliced them up and I've got lots of fields for Western or even the Eastern Front.

Destroyed Bunkers - Bought these for like £3 each,



Complete Bunkers - £5 each



You can make alot of things yourself very cheaply.... here is some of the stuff i made for myself.

My own wire...and defences made from thin wire, paperclips and the dragons teeth were made from FORGEWORLD Sprue off cuts..









I even made little tobruks as Defensive Positions.



I bought 4 little life rafts at a Miniature Show....Then got some Lolly pop sticks....Created my own little Pontoon Infantry Bridge.



The one thing I think you can never have enough of is Hedgerows. Terrain, even relatively open terrain has hedgerows and copses in it. Roads are good shout, but to look good you will need 2-3 metres of it, to make realistic looking infrastructure. Equally HO or TT Scale Railway pieces (rail being fundamental back then as Roads were quite what they are today!).

Buildings can be relatively light, e.g A Farmhouse, and some outbuildings and a Barn. You can add specific terrain to spice it up when you've maybe got some spare cash.

For example on D-Day / Market Garden a Crashed Glider in a field can break up a large open area, equally I trashed my STuGs from OPEN FIRE and made them look like they were burned out, for battlefield ambient destroyed vehicles.

With terrain I think the Landscape is key, the little embellishments you place heighten the experience but if the forces fit, and the terrain fits, personally I don't mind losing because I love the "Spectacle" especially in Large Games.

I think simple, but lots of it is the way to go. here is some of Clubs Big terrain battles.









One day I aspire to this level, but between the price and the lack of flexibility, I don't think I'll get there.

THE TERRAIN GUY.

Awesome Pics btw, I really want to play this game now.

Printable buildings are very nice and relatively inexpensive. If you go to Wargamer Vault, you can get terrain bundles from Dagobahdave. You can print those buildings/ruins in any scale you need. They go together quickly and look really nice.

I made a lot of hedge rows very easily.

Purchased some tongue depressors off amazon (100 for £5) and then two big bags of clump foliage.

I then proceeded to place said foliage onto the depressors. Hey presto 6" hedge rows

I use the same technique on my bases too

I did this technique for the Hedgerows too, but found that the Clump foliage tended to fall off after a short period? Not sure if it was me using the wrong glue.

Lots of options for hedges

http://sixdsix.co.uk/?p=119

http://ericsdob.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/terrain-making-hedges.html

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?374211-15mm-Bocage-Tutorial

This is very good but very involved.

http://www.blmablog.com/2010/05/making-15mm-bocage.html

I made my roads with liquid nails and cork matting.

Cork came in a 2' x 4' roll. Cut it in 2" x 1' wide strips strips then apply liquid nails on top and spread out with a stick to make ruts. Paint and stain and you have passable muddy roads.

Cut crop fields I made from a coconut husk welcome mat. Cut into 6"x6" squares I think I got 24 or so of them for about 5 bucks.

My local Micheal's store was closing out thier basswood and balsa at 90% off, so I went crazy and cleaned them out. That plus a 50 cent Christmas ornament and I no have a scratch built Russian Orthodox church. I'll try to get pictures up of that this evening.

Also if you head out to Walmart, you can find $1.50 ceramic X-Mas houses that are good scale for FoW. The size and price make them great place holders for better stuff. Also, a little paint and Russian alphabet and they become Eastern Front.

Here's a bunch of paper buildings in 15mm I've found on the net

https://drive.google.com/?authuser=0#folders/0B2MWVpzB0HSIZGEyYnMwcHVuOWc