"Canvas Sheets" Topic

As figures, models and stands are sometimes entangled with the usual material representing ground, and as too many forests and other weedland have ill defined areas, and as placing roads towns and small hills indeed the entire table usually takes a lot of time to set up, I use prepainted canvas sheets, with the water hazards, forest areas, roads, gullies, rises building areas and hill areas already painted on. The omly thing I need to do is to place the bridge, huilding and other terrain models
And if I want to rum another scenario, I simply flip the canvas to the revers eide

Do similar with artists canvas but painters canvas is a LOT cheaper. Can sometimes find it at fabric stores on sales, too – with patterns that might be useful. But I just use it for a base and put painted to match and blend terrain pieces on top of the canvas.

Do you have any pictures? I love seeing what other people come up with to solve their own terrain problems.

Local gamer and artiste extraordinaire Thomas Foss made my favorite canvas terrain ever, which you can see in some posts on his blog. He used nothing more than latex paints and sand with standard drybrushing techniques, and made hills to match. Sadly, I'm a much less competent artist, and I've utterly failed to replicate his results. Meh.

I agree about the costs in interference and time commitment, but I strongly prefer 3D terrain, and so far I've preferred reconfigurable terrain pieces to making a new canvas for every battle. However, my own terrain techniques are a lot like Mark Luther's, without the chalk roads or glue. Since his tables look way better than mine, I'm planning to try his chalk and glue techniques, which is getting closer to your idea of painting/drawing the terrain directly onto the cloth.

I solve the "ill defined areas" problem with irregular blobs of decorated felt. The buildings and trees move out of the way as the troops come through and the felt defines who is "in" or "out" of the woods, town, bog, rocky area, etc. There's no reason these areas couldn't be drawn directly on the cloth instead, though. Six of one, half dozen of the other…

I try to do most of my setup at home, placing the flat and flexible pieces on the cloth and then rolling it up. When I arrive at the gaming location, I unroll it, place the hills underneath the cloth, and put down the 3D items like structures, trees, lichen, etc.

- Ix

I have no photos sorry
I use the canvas sheets, a one time purchase and the so called cheap acryllics, for 5mm . I use 1 300 scale buildings and 1 300 homemade trees etc, very small, and hill pieces homemade so there is less of that 3D effect. I also prepaint the tivers, gullies and slight rolling terrain that rarely, the microterrain, that rarely appears yet is so vital.
I also use a sort of varying terrain, where I represent partially damaged buildings and forests etc through substituting the undamaged terrain with again homemade damaged or destroyed terrain A lot of work but I do not subscribe to the all or nothing with terrain, where one either has an undamaged building or it is totally destroyed or tbe no you cant school that says you cant start forest fires or blast away trees.
Which of course means I have games in which massed artjllery can bring down high rises and forests, something say Team Yankee and Flames of War lack
and with variable terrain and hidden units and dummies and sighting ranges, well, I depart from TY FoW and Command Decision and Bolt Action. you need to do recon
In 20th century war everyone and everything is not what it seems
I really prefer SUTC,a double blind umpired 20th century skirmish game in which you are role playing and will be lucky to know anything.