"Mars Terrain - What do you use?" Topic

For your battles on Mars, what sort of terrain table/mat do you use?

* red desert
* standard desert
* regular grassy terrain
etc.

Green cheese?

Depends: Victorian fantasy or modern hard science setting?

Reddish to desert. But anything Martian I do on a table owes more to Burroughs and Brackett than to Mariner.

Regular desert as nasa uses a red filter on the photos it releases.

link

Never actually gamed a battle on Mars, but if I did I'd use a mat I've got that was supposed to depict an earthly arid landscape but come out rather too reddish.

For our Space 1889 games we have used various shades of red to red/orange.

Arctic?

Canyons
inlgames.com/canyon.htm
Which will usually have the tiles flipped over to the red desert side.

Subterranean caves & underground lost cities.

Been a while since I played much of anything, but for my group in the old city…

Usually 'yellow' desert, just because of that's what we had, but occasionally Battlefield in a Box red rocks/plateau/whatever and a certain reddish rock-in-a-can sprayed Guns of Navaronne playset, lair of the High Martians, don't you know, could give a red tint.

Damn, wish I knew where that mountain side went…

Doug

When I painted Mars (actually Ares) I covered his base with sand, then painted the sand with Reaper Redstone. After that dried, I dry brushed the sand with Reaper Redstone Highlight.

OK, I know that isn't exactly what you had in mind, Bill. If I were to do a larger area than just one figure base, I would want to mix things up a bit, probably allowing reddish stone and dirt to predominate, but including other colors as well.

Grelber

I admit to not having anything, but every time I think of doing a VSF project I think about buying a reddish colored cloth for the table cover.

I usually base my figures to match the tabletop, but in this case, I have no idea what I'm using for the tabletop yet!

Thanks for the ideas!

I have an old pinkish-orangey blanket for my ground cloth.

Also works great for Tattoine pod races. I've made Tattoine ridges and craters for other planets with pink foam pieces that are lightly sprayed with multi-coloured sand texture paint and some pink showing through.

I've run several John Carter of Mars games & I used a rusty red felt cloth 6 feet by 4 feet that I got at Hobby Lobby.