Tabletop Terraformation

Only God, the poet writes, can make a tree. But you can make or buy all manner of miniature facsimiles that will enhance your wargame table and make your game pop. The same goes for rocks, hedges, hills, rivers, etc. In my early wargaming days, one of my group expressed his approach to tabletop terrain by explaining that he was a wargamer, not a dioramist. I understood, sort of, but I did not concur. I'm not ashamed to say that I do like me a good tablescape.

Pursuant to that passion, I've invested much over the years in buying and creating the bits and pieces that transform bare space into miniature fields of battle with high visual appeal. The following is a summary and commentary that unfolds the evolution of my experience with tabletop terrain.

In the beginning

My non-dioramist friend referred to above owned a game store in Campbell, CA where I got my start with miniature gaming in the 70s. We played a lot of WRG 5th ancients and also 25mm Napoleonics and ACW using a set of rules he'd written (Brigadier!). 

The terrain we used was, shall we say, symbolist in its antipathy to verisimilitude. The table we played on was a large 12'x6' platform made of 2x4s and thick plywood sheet (actually two 6'x6' tables joined together). I call it a platform because it was so solid you could likely have held a hoe-down on it without fear of collapse. The plywood playing surface was covered by green indoor/outdoor carpet, the kind people used for their patios. Woods were just another piece of the same material cut into an irregular shape. Rivers were two strands of blue yarn used to delineate the river's edges. Roads were two pieces of brown yarn arranged sort of parallel. Buildings were cubes made out of black cardstock. Hills were chunks of rough cork sheets that could be used for bulletin boards and were also, for some reason, considered a prime element of decor in the 70s, along with electric-blue shag carpet and avocado-hued kitchen appliances.

The 70s were an era of not-yet-there as far as wargaming terrain was concerned.

My other gaming experience in the 70s was the "square ancients" game we played in Al Tilley's garage every Wednesday night. Al created a 4'x4' table of masonite board that he painted chalkboard green, then meticulously marked it off in 1.5" squares using an indelible ink marker. Al would come up with scenarios to play and would have the terrain features drawn on the board with colored chalk ready for the weekly game. I wish I had pictures. In one sense, they were works of art, but they were also all 2-dimensional. 25mm figures on a flat surface seemed to me an inadequate tableau. I often thought it would be cool to introduce 3D terrain on that square grid.

Geo-Hex

I think Geo-Hex was a revolution in tabletop terrain. Kieran Rohan ("KR" to everyone) created it back in the 80s as a versatile 3D terrain system that used styrofoam hexes and partial hexes that fit together to create any kind of surface you wanted.

My first experience of Geo-Hex was around 1989/1990 at the long-gone but magnificent in its time Emperor's Headquarters in Chicago (the building Todd Fisher had remodeled in Empire Style for his store is still there). After oohing and aahing over the goodies to be had there, I went into the back area where there we several tables set up, some of which were covered by Geo-Hex. I did not think such things were possible for men to achieve.

When I moved out to Washington and got involved with the regional org NHMGS, I was pleased to learn that KR was one of us and he regularly brought his product up from Oregon to sell at our annual convention. I even got a tour of his shop when I went down to Portland for a game day event. I never bought any Geo-Hex. It was out of my price range and I had nowhere to store it. It wasn't as onerous as a set of big game boards, but it required several boxes to get a tabletopful of terrain. I had many friends with Geo-Hex, however. Kevin Smyth used his until it wore out, then he gave it away.

Geo-Hex has a lot going for it. It's heyday as a wonder of tabletop transformation is past, but it's still available. There have been a lot of creative additions and the BattleScape option provides a hex grid for them as needs one.

I actually did buy some Geo-Hex a few years ago, but just a hill set. I bought it out of necessity, too, because I'd forgotten to bring my pinkboard hills to the convention and there were the Geo-Hex hills sets on sale. I used it maybe twice. It now sits neglected in a box in my garage. 

My only other reservation, which is true also for game boards (see below), is the gap. Piecing things together to create the tablescape leaves a lot of gaps between pieces, which diminishes the aesthetic. That's likely my own obsessive pet peeve, but it's always bothered me to see a surface cut up by the joint between boards or hex bits.

Game boards

At the same convention where I saw Rich Hasenauer's blanket terrain (see below), my group played a game of Guilford Courthouse on a set of boards that were originally created for a Second Day at Gettysburg game in the previous convention. The boards were very beautifully made by Dennis Bergum (long deceased now) for Phil Bardsely. Phil had those game boards in his pool house for 25 years. I don't believe we ever used them again. When Phil died and I was helping his wife Karen to sell his collection of toys, my advice was to toss the boards, assuming that no one would want them. However, to my great surprise, someone bought them. It goes to show that one person's peeve is another's pursuit.

Another experience with game boards was with the more generic ones Dennis made for Bob Mackler. Bob and I played many games of Napoleon's Battles on those boards. I recall that Bob paid Dennis a lot for the boards, but he got a lot of use out of them. Maybe because he didn't have a pool house to ignore them in. I suspect that Bob still has them somewhere.

Finally, Kevin Smyth and I made a game board for our Tarawa game for Crossfire. Kevin wrangled the plywood and particle board base in his garage with occasional kibitzing from me (no actual work, mind you). My main part was making the above-ground bits like the palm trees, bunkers, redoubts, etc. We created it all for a convention game and were able to play it a number of times after that, but at some point, the boards sat in Kevin's garage (no pool house) until they went into the landfill.

I still have the palm trees. I believe they're the sole remaining bit of that game in my or Kevin's possession; everything else has been sold off (or tossed) in the many years since.

My thinking about game boards generally is that they're something to avoid. They look great (usually), especially at first before continued use (if any) or long storage leaves them warped and dodgy. More so than diamonds, game boards are forever and don't store neatly and easily, even if you have a pool house.

Even if you wind up reusing your game boards, their lack of versatility must start to wear. You'll be fighting over the same hill or over the same ford in the same location game after game. It's almost sisyphean in its repetitiveness. 

Happiness is a felt blanket

The first time I saw a blanket used for wargame terrain was in the early 90s. Rich Hasenauer was a guest at our Enfilade! convention (at that time held in beautiful, almost still bucolic Lynnwood, WA) and hosted a game of Fire and Fury. What was interesting is that he had a styrofoam base carved into all kinds of undulations over which he laid an old olive drab army blanket. He had a lot of miniature trees with pins coming out of the trunks. He stuck those through the blanket and into the underlying styrofoam. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. 

I'd never seen terrain created that way and what struck me was the simplicity of the idea. Why hadn't any of us thought it up? I guess someone had to say, "Let's slice the bread before we put it in the package." After that, it was up to everyone else to say, "Well, of course." 

I think, actually, that blankets may have been used in the olden days of the hobby, H.G. Wells and all that. 

Robert Louis Stevenson used blankets but they were laid over books, which hardly have the contours of a real hill (image from The Man of Tin blog).

I searched various Army surplus stores for blankets and got a few that worked. Laid over various thicknesses of builder's pinkboard with a bevel cut on the edges, you get a perfectly seamless tabletop on which to place the rest of your terrain. Army blankets, however, have their limitations. Size is the big one. Trying to stretch a blanket made for a standard army cot over a 6' x 8' table is an exercise in dismay. Enter felt.

There's a plethora of craft felt that can be bought in widths of 6' and cut to whatever length you want. Early on, we found that the best color was something called Reets Relish. It's a mottled green, so it doesn't have the dull monochrome effect that a solid green would have. The 6' width became hard to get in the craft stores, so John Kennedy used to get a bolt at his store and you could buy it from him by the yard. The tables at The Panzer Depot were always covered in Reets Relish felt. Even without a styrofoam or pinkboard substrate, they were a good ground cover. I have several such felt mats of various sizes.

I used felt, too, for naval gaming. "Big Blue" is my 8'x6' felt mat in a mottled blue which has seen numerous naval actions from the Mississippi to the North Pacific over the years. (Yes, I know Big Muddy isn't actually blue, but it is when my ironclads fight on it.)

Going to the mat

Dave Schueler fell in love with thick neoprene game mats. At the time, I was sort of "meh" on the idea. My biggest concern being hills. The blanket method allows for creating seamless hills that obviate any need to blend with the surface because they're under it. The neoprene mats are too think to fold effectively over the hill shape below, so the only option is to have the hill sit on top.

What changed my initial reaction to mats was inheriting two of Dave's Desert Planet mats that he got from TableWar. This was right at the time that I was working furiously on my first Xenos Rampant detachment. I planned to use them on the standard felt blanket terrain, but Eric Donaldson was painting his XR detachment with a desert scheme. The light went on.

I tend to avoid idiosyncratic terrain, i.e., terrain bits that have very limited use. I suspended that aversion to create a lot of terrain for Xenos Rampant that matches the yellowy Desert Planet mats.

Soon after my Desert Planet experience, I had an I Don't Have A Job experience, which afforded me the option to play Saga in Tacoma on Wednesdays. This experience resulted in adding a number of new mats to my collection. It was just easier to use a 3x3, 3x4, 4x6, etc. mat to define the playing area than to have to somehow delimit a space on a big 6x8 felt blanket.

I have sea mats, too, that replace Big Blue. Two 4x6 mats cover the same area. I just ordered another 4x6 sea mat with a 2" hex grid on it to replace the felt mat I've used with my ancient naval rules, Row Well and Live!

The hills are alive

Having gone over to the mat side, I was again challenged by my initial concern, namely that modeling hills with a thick neoprene mat is difficult. I tinkered with the idea of making hills from builder's pink board that were properly flocked to match the mat surface, but I really kind of hate that. Pink board chips and never looks right. It's better left below the blanket.

However, I found some cast resin hills on Etsy that got me excited. They're very heavy and have good detail. The seller was going out of business because he wasn't making the sales he hoped for. Large, cast resin hills are apparently not what people want these days. I, however, am delighted to have found them.

I got three of the four he produced. The fourth was out of stock and he had no plans to cast it again. They arrived all white and shiny. I did a size comparison. Great for 28mm scale, but a bit undersized for Maebh scale.

They have a lot of rocky bits, which I highlighted in gray and did a few light drybrushings over before I flocked them.

The result was pleasing. They don't blend perfectly, but they don't stick out like a sore thumb either.

I love the hills, but they're all rocky. I wish I could find cast resin hills of similar size that were just smooth, with no rocky outcroppings. 

Etsy

Speaking of Etsy, where I found those hills, it's been a great source for terrain materials. I got several rocky pieces that I've used for my Xenos Rampant terrain and for Tribal.

Almost all come unpainted and are 3D prints. I like them unpainted and I had to negotiate with a seller who only wanted to sell finished bits. When I finish them, they're consistent with my other pieces and match the mats.

Etsy is a good source for 3D printed terrain, especially buildings. I'm not a fan of the MDF products. They're too much work and I'm fundamentally lazy.

Hedging my bet

Despite being fundamentally lazy, I did opt for a more involved method for creating model hedges. Doing ECW and 1672 projects as I am, hedges are important. I came across an idea that used popsicle sticks and that coconut fiber stuff used for lining hanging planters.

I cut it into strips, glue it to a popsicle stick, distress like anything, then flock it with medium coarse Woodland scenics. I use a combo of light green and yellow.

The result is a wilder, woolier look than what I had been using before. The result on the table is very satisfying.

That's all for now. My posts have a way of growing, so I'll curtail it here. I hope you've seen something you like. I recommend the hedges. They're a bit of work, but not too much. You can also make smaller versions for 15mm or smaller. Just use smaller popsicle sticks.