Slitherine

As some of you may have noticed, I have been posting a few times for info about basing a roman and carthaginian army. Both are virtually finished now, although I don't have the rules yet, I am guessing a cool 1000 points for each army, which gives me plenty of choice as to what to deploy.

Now on to the next subject. I lilke my battlefields to be as attractive as possible. I will be using 15mm figures. I have seen a couple of comments about terrain SIZES, though I have forgotten what they were now

My real question though is what are people using on their battlefields?

What are the main terrain pieces?
Hills, woods and rough ground, or are there more? rivers, settlements, multiple levels of "rough" etc.

What are you using to represent these?
I have some old hills that if the right size? will probably do.
I have some model trees, are you putting down say felt to represent the foot print of a wood and then putting trees on top of it?
How about rough ground? I guess I could just do some felt, though I would like to do something more than that if possible? Maybe felt aircrushed with added cat litter (clean!).

Basically give me some inspiration, ideas etc. What do you use or what have you seen in use.

In particular if you have seen anything that though perhaps not unique to FoG, is certainly more common in FoG than say DBM etc please let me know.

I want to be up and running with 2 beautiful armies and a well prepared scenic board BEFORE the rules arrive, which should be within 2 weeks here in the UK now.

Oh, if you use any US trade names etc for materials can you try and indicate what they are as the names are usually unknown outside of the US.

Ta

Andy

If you play with the 'civilised' armies then I found my terrain selection wanting for 'agricultural' & 'developed' terrain types....

Open fields, closed field, plantations, vineyards are things that you may wish to have (fields especially as they are compulsary for those terrains)

Good things I found to use are - TSS fields ... Not the big terrain squares but they do ~5mm MDF quartered fields (ploughed, flocked etc) about 20cm in diameter. You can get them off ebay - seller 'sellthatstuffboy' - they are about a tenner for four pieces (more than enough)

SA scenics size 2 (10mm) hedges are good for either edging your fields (enclosed) or using in rows for vineyards. a dozen pieces for about a tenner also...

I'd like to find something that would do for olive groves also - but yet to find any

Cheers

Simon

From a practical consideration, it pays to have a base layer, such as felt, with movable features on top of it (trees, bushes, buildings etc) so the features can be moved about to make room for the units when they are in the terrain. This is what most former DBM players used.

The base layer can have some 3-d modelling on it, such as ploughed fields, low bunds or shallow ditches, as long as it won't interfere too much with the placement of bases. Even if it is not 3-d modelled, quite a few players paint the base layer to improve it compared to plain felt.

There are five levels of terrain in the game: open, uneven, rough, difficult and impassable.
Hills can be steep or gentle.

Sizes:

Must fit inside a 16 MU circle.
Must contain a 4 MU x 6 MU rectangle.

Impassable includes ponds and coast (representing the edge of a large body of water). You may wish to make a coast as some of the historical battles between your armies took place next to lakes or large rivers. I can't find the size for rivers and coasts in the beta rules (I'm sure it's in there somewhere) but it's probably 4 MU max width for a river and for a coast 1-2 MU of beach, the rest water up to a total of no more than 6 MU. THey go along one short edge of the table.

Thanks guys,

Tried replying earlier but looks like i got that really annoying "invalid session" error i keep seeing

Is an MU an inch or 40mm for 15mm figs?

I am beginning to tend towards painted felt with trees on for woods and just painted for others.

Can you give me some examples of Uneven and rough as they sound very similar

Thanks

Andy

1 MU = 25 mm (or 1 inch in the USA, where they insist on using the units of the British Empire, despite having fought a war to get out of it).

Uneven, e.g. some rocks or bushes, cultivated fields

Rough, e.g. lots of rocks or bushes, cultivated fields subdivided by substantial walls, hedges or ditches.

We prefer inches in blighty too!

I' a mm man

pbeccas wrote:I' a mm man

mmmm, FoG

pbeccas wrote:I' a mm man

Moderator comment:

We'll have none of that reference to competing rules on this forum

Back to normal Hammy mode:

Myself I have two sets of sticks so I can be compatible with whatever the local conditions are.

Imperial in the former Empire
Metric on the continent

hammy wrote:Imperial in the former Empire
Metric on the continent

So that would be

Imperial in the former British Empire
Metric in the former Napoleonic Empire

For my wargaming, I use a "Roman ruler" that I picked up some years ago on a visit to the British Museum, with measurements in both millemeters and Roman unciae. So for me, a MU will be based on the "imperial inch!"

Cheers,
Scott

list_lurker wrote:If you play with the 'civilised' armies then I found my terrain selection wanting for 'agricultural' & 'developed' terrain types....

Open fields, closed field, plantations, vineyards are things that you may wish to have (fields especially as they are compulsary for those terrains)

Good things I found to use are - TSS fields ... Not the big terrain squares but they do ~5mm MDF quartered fields (ploughed, flocked etc) about 20cm in diameter. You can get them off ebay - seller 'sellthatstuffboy' - they are about a tenner for four pieces (more than enough)

SA scenics size 2 (10mm) hedges are good for either edging your fields (enclosed) or using in rows for vineyards. a dozen pieces for about a tenner also...

I'd like to find something that would do for olive groves also - but yet to find any

Cheers

Simon

The best value per $ fields I have seen are green doormats you can get from most hardware stores or even supermarkets. They are rubber backed and the cheaper and nastier the better as they are also the thinnest. The ones intended for just inside a doorway are the ones you are after. The one I have hase raised and ridges in bands so looks ploughed. It is about 2ft * 3ft so can be cut up into more fields than you'll ever need. brown ones are great for orchards. Just bang on some trees and you are set.

Anthony

rbodleyscott wrote:

hammy wrote:Imperial in the former Empire
Metric on the continent

So that would be

Imperial in the former British Empire
Metric in the former Napoleonic Empire

Havent they both been a single french empire since Hastings (with a 100 year civil war some time since then)?

expendablecinc wrote:

rbodleyscott wrote:

hammy wrote:Imperial in the former Empire
Metric on the continent

So that would be

Imperial in the former British Empire
Metric in the former Napoleonic Empire

Havent they both been a single french empire since Hastings (with a 100 year civil war some time since then)?

THat would be the former Napoleonic Empire except for the Louisiana Purchase and certain areas formerly part of Mexico.

miffedofreading wrote:We prefer inches in blighty too!

IMO GB players should get into the habit of using metric as it is not unusual for Brits to attend continental comps and vice versa, although it probably doesn't make a great deal of difference in FoG. (In DBM it makes a big difference in some column expansions).

Surprised the mm /inches thing is so interesting to people!

OK I will give a more serious answer then

The UK went metric officially almost 40 years ago and has been moving slowly ever since.

I am 44 years old and am at roughly the cut over age group, I actually use metric and imperial units interchangeably.

People aged 50 or above in the UK usually don't like metric and stick to imperial. Most people aged oh say 35 or so or less in the UK tend to use metric. Certainly most of the under 20's I speak to are pretty much pure metric.

Me I like using both as and when it suits me. If it is a warm day it is 80 degrees fahrenheit, if it is a cold day it is nearly zero degrees centigrade. If something is very small it might be 1mm 1.5mm (not 3/64ths of an inch or whatever) for wargames type distances I would say something was 8 inches, not 20cms


All in all very dull, now when are those rules coming out, I have almost finished painting my armies and am preparing my door mats, now to battle

Back on topic!

The most practical way is to cut pieces of fabric in the right shapes you want and use them to mark the terrain area. You can then decorate these w/ trees, bits of carpet (cornfields?), small rock formations, model buildings or whatever you think adds a good visual impact. This ensures that if rules change you can get some new fabrics and make new terrain with little effort. For example, I'm keeping all my decorations from DBM and getting pieces of fabric with the new measurements.

A cheap source of these decorations are pet shops, where you will find quite a lot of stuff for aquariums. These are light and resistant although not that visually impressive. Alternatively, you can use model railway decorations which are stunning but are generally expensive and were not meant to be carried around so will break.

double post sorry

double post sorry

I'm splashing out on some stuff from Miniature Worldmaker of Australia,they do some lovely fields,closed and open,vineyards hills,all in durable rubber,that caused some laughs when Lynda took the parcel in from the postman,
David