"Show me your modular terrain boards!" Topic

Hi guys, trying to use and abuse the extra time at home because of the all well known reasons I decided to start a project to build a modular wargaming table. Those that you can change-rotate position of squares and get a complete new board for another game with connecting roads and rivers, not so sure about creating modular hills. I will start with a 6ft x 4ft green grass Europe style board for WWII or Medieval battles in 28mm.

Would love to see your board photos and any tips and advise are welcome. Thanks, cheers.

Best 'modular' terrain in my book is GeoHex. You can still get it on eBay (original creator sells it). This on a base 'board' in my mind gives the best in terms of options and storage. For the base I used foam mats that I've turfed (Woodland Scenics T-49 on latex house paint). I'll see if I can drum up some pics

I have never done them or played on one but I have seen several on other's blogs and considered briefly but did not go that route.

Hopefully you will get some good examples, they are cool to look at.

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I guess my modular boards are in a different vien. For large outdoor areas, I use modular pieces – ground, cover, trees, water, etc – rather than set boards.

I have no pictures, but there was a great set at Ft. Riley, KS. It was made up out of 4' x 8' sheets of plywood and each panel was on coasters. It could scroll north to south and depicted a specific area of West Germany. They made a gaming area at least 24' x 16'. We played micro armor on it for modern and WW2. A fellow who knew the builder made his own tiles that were 2' x 4' that could scroll left/right and up/down and easily make a 12' by 6' play area. He also made some small 1' x 4' pieces to represent rivers, rail lines, and autobahns.

Major Mike, that sounds awesome!

Ok., here are two pictures of my boards.

1) WW2 Tunesia in 15mm. You see the corners of three boards.

2) Waterloo in 28mm. It was the biggest table we ever made with my boards. For the game you could pull the Placenoit-part to the side.

I have three tips for making your own baords:
1) Make big boards. I think 120*60cm is the best (and it fits the available XPS insulation). You have fewer edges. So, no Geohex for me. An additional advantage is, that you can put the boards on smaller tables.
2) Make diagonal rivers and roads (i myself did it wrong with my middle of the board river and roads). You loose fleixibility, but you get a much better non-square optic.
3) Make the boards with heights. Nowadays i always think, how can my board be so, that you couldnt do the same with a mat.

Decabalus, those are simply inspiring. Have you done a tutorial anywhere? Really excellent stuff.

Deabalus – I think your boards look very well and when I look at your photographs I am not aware of the fact that there are boards as there is no warping.

I am often tempted to make my own boards but I imagine them to be too restrictive especially when it comes to roads and rivers.

Regards

Hi guys, excellent photos and options, great creativity. Decebalus, I would love to see more photos of your work and if you have some examples of those diagonal rivers and roads.

I know most "terrainers" use hills in the edges and corners and roads/rivers in the center of squares to multiply connectivity by basic geometry.

@MrZorro

Read this article from Quindia. He shows boards that dont have roads and rivers connected in the middle. It looks much better, because nature is never right angled.

link

I did that wrong and cant correct it afterwards.

@Fred Mills + Wargamorium

Thanks for your nice words.

I selected the good looking pictures. ;-) In reality i know, where my boards arent up to date. I started my boards about 15 years ago inspired by the boards of the Perry twins.

Now the Perrys have revamped their terrain and i really would like to have the same.

link

Great link – many thanks!

Those stupid Perry brothers, eh? Ruining perfectly acceptable mediocrity with all their talent, polish, professionalism, and willingness to share. The s. :-)

@Deabalus – would be great to see various overall and detail shots of your Tunisia board!

@wargamin USA
There is no Tunisia-Board. I always use the same boards with different accessoires (i.e. trees and houses).

So for you all another theme: Late medieval germans against burgundians (28mm DBA). I only need two boards.

These are a series of 2' x 4' modular boards I made out of 1/2" thick MDF board with a sheet of pink insulation foam to glued to it. I bought the MDF board in pre-cut 2 x 4 sections and then a number of large 1" thick sheets of the pink insulation foam. Each section is also framed with 5/8" wooden battens to protect the foam. I spread wall spackle over the top of the boards and then painted and flocked them.

As a final protective measure, I applied some duct tape around the edges of each board.

The river sections were made by simply carving down into the foam until I reached the MDF layer. The MDF layer became the surface of the water which is painted in a dark color and then coated with Mod Podge gloss sealer.

I made a total of 6 of these, two are river boards, two are coastal boards, and two are plain land-based boards.

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Lots of great pics and good advice already posted, especially by Decebelus -- awesome boards! -- and Baranovich, whose terrain work shown here on TMP I've been a fan of for years!

As others have mentioned and shown pics of, I build rivers into my terrain boards. It's a lot work but I do it because I think the up-side in appearance outweighs the down-side of somewhat limited versatility for exact placement of rivers on the tabletop. On the other hand, I DO NOT BUILD ROADS INTO MY TERRAIN BOARDS. I feel like doing so would be too limiting when I set up my tabletop. I also feel like my "scatter terrain" style roads set down atop my boards look pretty good. This may be somewhat due to the fact that my boards are arid/desert, so there's no green grass for the roads to blend with, but I have seen similar effects accomplished using dirt or paved roads laid down atop temperate ground cover terrain boards. I think the only thing you lose out on is sunken roads, but you can always make a special bespoke board featuring a sunken road. I have a swamp board, originally built for a historical refight of a battle that featured a swamp, but since then it's been available to play the part of swamp terrain whenever needed.

Re: vertical terrain, I prefer to keep my terrain boards on the flat side, and build hills and mountains as separate pieces, again in the interests of versatility, so I can set up a wider variety of layouts. Hills and mountains are both common and vital elements of Afghan terrain, so I need mine to be as versatile as possible. That being said, I will be the first to admit that if I built my hills and mountains into my terrain boards, the finished effect would be more seamless and visually impressive.

Here are 4 wide pics, one from each table end in the midst of the last big game on my boards, which was a refight of the Sept. 1st 1880 Battle of Kandahar. The table itself is 6'x12', the boards are either 6'x2' or 2'x2' square….

Here's a few closer pics featuring the river boards…

…and the Rocky Mountains, built as separate "scatter" pieces:

Finally, here's a LINK to a recent post on my blog that includes a bit of a tutorial on building one of the 2'x2' ground cover boards with a wood frame to prevent warping:

link

@Mad Guru,

Oh man, that looks fantastic!! Love the cliffs especially! GREAT work!

Wow, spectacular boards, great effort and obviously great result. I am not really familiar with that conflict but looks very interesting.

In the previous post when they mention the Perry boards, they are spectacular too, I wonder what material/product is the one they use in top of the static grass to add variety, they look like clumps of grass, some kind of foliage. What is it? is it home made or can be purchased?

I don't use them but I built some Afghan terrain for a friend, they aren't fully geo-morphic because he wanted a river's edge on one of them link

Anton, that board is absolutely amazing!