"Specialist terrain" Topic

Now in the dark past I was a 1/72 Modern/SI FI player with perhaps too much of an obsession in fold flat terrain. The upshot is created quiu a bit of specialist terrain not normally used, here are some examples:

Checkpoint with barrier – only used once, later I saw in a mag how to build one. Clearly they had selected a pice of terrain thar was no threat to their advertisers.

Mixsile launch pad with missiles -occasional use

Missile container – vertical launch "box" not sure it was ever used.

Radar dish – occasional

Military style 2 story building with wide opening doors – very occasional use.

Airport control tower – used a couple of times.

The list goes on. I suspect if they were not fold flat they would have been dumped years ago to free storage space. I am about to scale a few bits down to 1/144 for a show which made me think of this issue.

Do you have/had the equivalent specialist terrain and do you keep it despite its rare use?

Yes – crashed spaceship (old GW terrain piece for a starter kit) – have never used it but do have a game coming up when it will be an objective marker

Mostly no, but I'm mostly a "mass battles" wargamer. In 28mm, I allow each army one unique piece of terrain, though. I'm trying to get into 28mm skirmish, which changes terrain requirements, and that sort of fold flat terrain, which could be reconfigured for different sorts of objectives would have merit.

The chateaux at Benouville gets occasional use when a chateaux is required, Pegasus Bridge has only had one game, but I'd never part with it, partly because of the stupid amount of time I spent making it.
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Osama Bin Laden's compound in MDF. Bought to run that raid. Now the house of the head honcho in any middle eastern game. It's 20mm. I use it as a jawa junkyard in 28mm star wars games.

Hougoumont. Even in 15mm scale it's huge. 2 ft x 4 ft on the table. And I have never fought the Battle of Waterloo as I only have a 15mm French army. Maybe I will use it for a Franco Prussian battle.

I try to use my specialty terrain as much as possible. Yes, I do keep it, though. I have a bunch of 54mm Army Men terrain which sees very limited use -- getting people together for a mini's game is hard, and for an Army Men game, the pool of players shrinks a bit, for lack of enthusiasm.

For my 28mm fantasy games, I have a plastic, wooden fort/stockade. I mounted it on an MDF base, years ago. It has been the centerpiece in around four different mini's games and two RPG sessions, over the past 15 years. It broke off of its MDF base, last year, and so I had to re-mount it, using newer, stronger techniques. I will keep it around as it is rather handy to have.

I have a bunch of square castle towers and wall sections, made by applying full sheet label printouts to 3mm thick cardboard; I cut these to size, gluing them to square wooden dowels, in the corners, to make really strong, modular castle pieces. I've used them in roughly three different mini's games, over the past 15 years. They took a lot of hours of effort to make, so, yes, Virginia, I will keep them. They are too handy to have around, when I need a castle for a game (mini's or RPG).

I have a number of containers holding 110# cardstock modular castle pieces, which I have only used a couple of times in the past 24 years; they are a reddish-brown stone color, and the newer castle models are gray stone, so they give me a castle of different architecture, sizes, configuration, and color. These are CastleWorks, which I believe was the very first cardstock castle on the market. For that reason alone, I have affection for it.

I am considering upgrading the existing CastleWorks models with the 3mm thick cardboard. More likely, though, I will reprint and rebuild them entirely: they were printed using an inkjet printer, with less ink density, to save money. My newer castles were printed on a color laser, and the quality is far superior. Laser printouts of the CastleWorks are quite vibrant, compared to the lower quality inkjet printouts.

I am fortunate in that I have plenty of storage, but it is dwindling. I may need to re-evaluate my situation, within the next decade, as I approach retirement. I hate to get rid of anything, though, as when I retire, I hope to game weekly, or bi-weekly, so my terrain will see a lot more usage. That is my hope, anyway… Cheers!

My small Celtic village has not been used (yet…), nor my Roman fort-ish playing card -shaped (half) stockade (needs more curved bits to make it into a barbarian stockade !). The Welsh castle (small and slight) isn't quite finished, nor the Desert Fort, nor the promontory cliffs with their underground cavern.

The city walls, however, have been used several times.

I have the Counterblast Scout Ship in 28mm with extras and The War Rocket Ajax (also with extras in 28mm from the kickstarter) that need to be built…both are large terrain pieces that will probably be used rarely, but I'm extremely fond of them. I also have a 3' Ork Mega Gargant for WH40k that I've owned for 15+ years that has never seen the games table either…I really need to rectify that situation some day.

I try not to make terrain that is too specific, but for some scenarios it's nice to have a famous building – the Chew House, Fort Sumter, La Haye Sainte, Hougoumont, the Reichstag, etc. If you're going to fight the scenario with miniatures, it seems worth the effort to do it right.

To be honest in the early days I was not really thinking about the utility of pieces were I was designing. Plus I think the direction of play, the scenarios that we most found most atractive changed so what may have seemed usefull at the time became ,less so. I did a whole set of blast walls for isolating aerospace vehicles, so one blowing up would not impact another. This made for interesting raids SAS style on a small board; but the style lost favor so the vehicles and blast walls went away. Fold flat meet that they could be stored efficiently and some will rise again in a smaller scale.

Some were fine but in the end just not me. A set of European compounds walls and some buildings to go in them. In the end they did not have the same demand I. tactical thinking of a more. On venting village so was "stored'. ts interesting that many of you have similar items, one you have but that rarely if ever get and outing.

The basic hills still get used some are decades old. However more sophisticated ones have had in in I'm use they are e effect to tactical demanding for the guys who want to play at 1/72.

So style of ply may be a factor in what gets used and what gets abandoned, thought on this issue?