SCENERY:
Terrain Systems

Now I'm in the "real world," with a house, and a real job. This gave me some money and space so I figured it was time to upgrade my miniatures terrain. About six months to a year ago I brought the same questions to this group. You might want to glance through the Command Decision mailing list archives. I got several suggestions, and each of the various methods has its particular advantages, and disadvantages. I suggest gathering as much information on the different approaches as you can, decide which qualities are most important to you, and which terrain system has the trade-off in qualities that best suits you. It certainly helps if you have seen the various approaches at conventions, etc.

Unfortunately, visual appeal seems to be directly opposed to the rest of your requirements. You will have to make a trade-off.

After several months of considering I settled on the Terrain Maker 4" hex approach. It has tremendous visual appeal (I was knocked out at the Origins convention in Fort Worth a few summers ago) and probably the highest flexibility (as far as the types of things you can do, and the re-use of pieces, however you will probably still have to make special purpose hexes for scenario specific terrain features (just like every other system)). With GHQ's instruction book and video it is fairly easy to make and fun (at least for now), but time consuming. I think storage is probably it's weakest aspect, especially with heavily wooded hexes. I haven't tried to tackle this aspect of it yet. I imagine several 2'x1'x1' boxes will be my initial storage... we'll see how it goes.

On initial inspection, I dismissed Terrain Maker out of hand due to expense, and if you build your terrain completely from TM hexes you will pay a small fortune for one 6'x8' layout. Fortunately for those of us without 6 figure salaries, there are alternatives. Sorry GHQ, I love you, but not that much!

I buy sheet styrofoam, and cut my own hexes. There are several different kinds of styrofoam:

There is the good old "standard" white kind that is made out of small beads compressed into large blocks. You can buy 4'x8' sheets of this cut to any thickness you desire from a packaging shop (look up packaging in the yellow pages). If you take this route, get the highest density styrofoam available (usually somewhere between 1.7 lbs and 2.0 lbs). The density determines the graininess of the styrofoam, and the higher density foam give a cleaner cut, with less crumbling.

A better alternative (and sometimes cheaper) is EPS (Extruded PolyStyrene). This is a piece of foam that is basically one big cell, this results in greater rigidity and produces an extremely clean cut with no crumbling making it easier to sand and shape. It is sold in 4'x8' sheets in the insulation section of places like Home Depot, Scotty's, 84 Lumber, and similar hardware warehouse stores. There are two kinds: "Blueboard" from Dupont that is blue oddly enough, and for those of you opposed to giant political families from the state of Delaware, Dow-Corning makes a competing product that is pink. I haven't used the pink stuff, but for our purposes I imagine there isn't a whole lot of difference. Depending on your latitude you will find EPS of various thicknesses. Here in Dallas, 1/2" sheets are common, and fortunately that is the base thickness for the TM approach. 1" was much harder to find, but I finally got in contact with the Blueboard wholesale supplier for NorthEast Texas, a company that makes walk-in vaults and freezers. They couldn't beat the major hardware warehouses at $5.50 for the 1/2" 4'x8' board, but had the best price I had seen for 1" 4'x8' sheets at around $10.50. 1/4" was near to impossible to find. Apparently Dupont does not supply it to their commercial wholesalers because its a "residential" product. The hardware warehouse stores had big 4'x24' sheets on sale at $27.50, but they had been accordion folded into 1' sections, and thus much of the surface area would be unusable. I settled on using white styrofoam for 1/4" hexes for now. The Blueboard supplier suggested that a packaging store might be willing to cut the Blueboard into 1/4" sheets for me. I will try this in the future.

I created a hex 4" across using xfig on my Sun SPARC, and printed it in postscript on a laser printer. The dimension were perfect. I photocopied it, and the dimensions were not perfect (yes the enlargement was set on 100%), so I only use the paper hex patterns I print on the laser printer. If anyone wants a 4" postscript hex I have one.

I lay the pattern on the sheet EPS, and trace several hexes side by side. I use a razor to cut out the hexes. I find the best razors to use are the cheap plastic ones with the extendable blades that are segmented so you can snap off a section when it becomes dull. These are better than the standard blade razors because you can extend the blade about 3-4" which is necessary for cutting 1" hexes cleanly.

At a rough estimate I figure I can get 4-5 times as many 1/2" hexes from a 4'x8' sheet as I would from a bag of TM "flatland" hexes for the same cost + my time.

The items that are worth buying from GHQ's actual terrain maker line are the printed instructions & video. The printed instruction show you everything you need to know to get started, but much of it is devoted to the Battle of the Bulge scenarios and game boards. The video demonstrates how to make virtually the same stuff that's shown in the book, but they show game boards with terrain of all different types from South Pacific islands, to Middle East Desert. Though they don't show you how to make every terrain type, you at least get some ideas on how to make non-european terrain. You might consider getting the book before you decide on a terrain system, just to look at the color pictures if you haven't seen a TM layout before.

The TM hexes include fancy pipe cleaners for trees. These are easy to find from a GOOD craft store. If a place has pipe cleaners they can order the ones you need. I don't remember the name of the variety of pipe cleaner to use, but they are fairly long bristled and cut in a wavy pattern. I think Emerald is the best color, but Kelly, Moss, or Brown could be used as well. A bag of 24 pipe cleaners is $.99 to $1.99.

The rest of the materials in the TM system must be bought from a hobby, hardware, or paint store anyway so there really isn't anyway to avoid or lessen this cost. 1 quart cans of green, tan, and blue cost me $5-$7.50 a piece at Home Depot. A can of water puddy starts at $2. My wife had some good 1" brushes, but you can pay anywhere from $.50 to $12 for a paint brush. A coping saw is about $10. I can't remember the name of the company, but if you go to most any hobby shop or model railroad store you will find a great line of turf sawdust, and ground foam in various colors. $12 will get you 2 bags of "turf" in two colors, and 2 bags of "course turf" in 2 colors, which will be enough to get you going.

This is probably a good basic starting set of TM material. Adding it up, it probably is not "cheap" (a relative term), but a lot of the initial costs are non-recurring, or at least the materials go a long way. Of the marketed terrain systems (namely Terrain Specialties, Geo-Hex, and Terrain Maker) my materials are cheaper, and the final results look just as good. Terrain Specialties only advantage is they make it for you, so you don't have to do spend your time making it (to me, making it is half the fun, if you don't get some enjoyment out of creating terrain, painting vehicles, and setting up scenarios then maybe you are in the wrong hobby?!)

OK, I've dragged on long enough. But I wanted to give a detailed account of what I really use, because I wasted a lot of money buying tools (namely a Dremel Moto-Tool, and a vice) that have been useless to me. The best advice I can give is look around at the various terrain types, get the TM book if you have never seen it, and think about each one. Visualize what you would do with each terrain system. Don't be afraid to experiment a little with each before investing heavily in any one type. If you go with a cheaper system now, it's always possible to upgrade to something better later on.