"Non-SF Terrain for 15mm SFTTWG" Topic

I go to this town's "game store" maybe once a month now, and lately I started looking more closely at the ease and availability of Battlefront and Flames of War terrain bits for "getting something on the table". I'm looking more at pieces like tree sets, hedgerows, snowdrifts, and craters now, than I am at the houses.

As usual, I have a couple of uninformed opinions, and a couple of beginner questions. The houses seemed, to me, a bit pricey, compared to some painted stuff that I've bought mail-order. Things I've heard said by others about the line included pricey, inauthentic, mundane, unvaried and a better alternative was available elsewhere cheaper or delivered much more value-per-investment.

The scatter terrain also seemed a tad pricey, but the pieces were there in the store, I had one in my hand, and I could make a "battlefield" quickly, and be playing in no time. Although I still think they're on the expensive side, I can see getting the hedgerows and the craters, and trying to fake the snowdrifts.

I opted for the tree set, the 10-15mm "small autumn forest", for $35. USD I think I consider that a bit expensive, but what do I know? I have quite a bit of Army Painter ground cover to make them a bit more unique (and I need to learn to use that stuff for basing).

I'm not doing an entirely off-world campaign, so I'm not necessarily using only "sci fi" terrain. As a matter of fact, I'm using a bunch of "quaint" Old Europe terrain, including (eventually) several sections of a nice GameCraft/Crescent Root Studios "European" town/village. So WWII Eurofortress-style terrain and structures fit right in. There will have been a Weird Winter War in the past of this future, approximately 2024-2224 AD/CE.

Recently I discovered Acheson Creations, and I hope to use much of their 15mm Euro/Medieval/WWII terrain to bolster several sites.

My questions: Are you using any "Non-SF" terrain? What for/why? Earth? Planet(oid)? Ship? Period buildings? Specific style? Terrain zone/type/season? Specific commercial brand? Pre-built? Pre-painted? FoW/BF? Other? Opinions? Suitability? Scale issues? Comments?

I have thought of getting some european style old timber framed houses and just add some of the sci-fi building add ons

One thing to consider with sci-fi is that there are a lot of options for things that can work.

Look around various neighborhoods, and pay attention to the designs. Most people aren't quite into the prefabricated look, and even if they live in one of the mass produced designs in a subdivision, they normally end up trying to disguise that by way off changes.

Even then, the basic designs of what people want tends to still incorporate a lot of older looks, so major aspects of homes in the future will probably continue that trend.

If they can grow trees on other worlds, well, you'll still have wooden construction as rather common unless there is a MAJOR reason not to do so, and even then mimicking wooden or stone work would probably still be common beyond the initial habitats.

Part of it would be bringing a touch of the familiar to the unfamiliar world. And there would still be some updates such as different lighting and similar, but would likely still look the same.

There are plenty of modern and Middle Eastern buildings that can be tweaked to fit a sci-fi setting, especially using doors and greeblies from places like CorSec Engineering, GZG, Khurasan, The Scene UK, etc.

You can also make some cool old-world-meets-new-world pieces by taking more traditional European buildings and adding sci-fi touches to them, like holoscreen billboards (see Antenociti's Workshop and Matakashi's blog for examples -- sorry, but I don't have those links handy at the moment), computer terminals, robots sweeping the sidewalks, and so forth. You can even weather the buildings heavily for a more dystopian feel.

Bring the SF down to Earth then:

TMP link

Dan

Even my 'non-SF' terrain gets a couple hightech details on it, like Antenociti's keypads.

I also like a lot of small pieces like eggbeater windmills and solar panels that I can just slap down someplace with otherwise older buildings.

As Lion says, adding details can change the apperance of a building to 'sci-fi' quite easily. It's really only limited by your imagination.

20mm Italerai 'African House' with add ons from 'The Scene, GZG & Ainstey.

Mayhem Miniatures (from Eureka) mudbrick biuildings with GZG details.

Although I haven't bought the buildings yet, my Corporate elites may well end up living in a replica of Old Kyoto.

All my WW2 normandy scenery (4ground buildings, trees, fences etc) is re-used for my near future games (on earth) with some simple add ons (as the chaps above say) and it works nicely.

I have been looking at Kerr & King Russian buildings as possible sci-fi buildings.

Also Falkland island buildings from Timecast.

Also have some African shanty buildings.
I also use standard wargames trees as well as aquarium plants. Fields and hedge rows to for historical wargames.