Hobby Progress – The Terrain

The past few months have seen a flurry of work on both Warhammer 40,000 and Dropzone Commander armies. I’ve now finished my 2,000 point Necron list, as well as my typical 2,500 point Shaltari force. With them out of the way I’ve started piddling with Space Wolves and Post-Human Republic forces, but the main focus this last week was knocking out the terrain for our battle reports.

We ordered an Arctic F.A.T. Mat from Frontline Gaming, and I have to say that I am thoroughly impressed with the quality of the product. It truly looks three dimensional, and the material is very durable for its flexibility (think of a 6’ x 4’ mouse pad). It is easy to store, easy to roll up and lay out, and it doesn’t move around when you bump it. On top of all that, the dice are virtually silent when you roll them. If you’ve ever even considered purchasing one of these, I can assure you that it is a good investment.

Next we set to scrubbing out the details for the terrain. I went ahead and did the airbrush work on all of our Games Workshop fortification terrain, so that it could be used in conjunction with everything else we have in mind. Past that, we wanted to make terrain that worked for both systems and also met the requirements we would have for any scenarios along the way.

 Yes, we've got something BIG planned for that piece of board...

 This ultimately led to several large rock formations, which will be joined in the near future by a number of forests. The trees in the forests will be separate, to allow for use in 10mm or 25mm by simply substituting in a different tree. The rock formations are on ¼” plywood, sawed on a table saw. We started them by drawing a rough shape on the wood with a Sharpie. Once we had the general shape cut out, we ran the wood along the saw at a 45 degree angle, giving us a decent bevel. Some sanding came next, and then we glued chunks of cork to the wood to represent rock formations in the heights of a mountain range.

Painting and flocking work continue as I write this, and we hope to have a 40k game on the board before the week is out. We are also going to purchase some bunkers from Hawk Wargames, and plan to start with some defensive scenarios that we haven’t tried out before. With luck, we will also have an orbital defense laser to include soon. No matter the case, the board will start featuring in our battle reports very soon!

Leave your comments below; is there something you would like to see added to the table? Stay tuned for the finished product next week.