Making wargames terrain

Every decent wargame needs terrain to play with. Terrain is really just any structure - natural or man-made - that would appear on your battlefield. Most historical battlefields need trees, hills, rocks, etc., but you can specialize your terrain based on the scenario you are playing. For instance, for an American Civil War themed wargame, you might want to make houses for a town, or fences for your troops to take cover behind. This terrain will affect the rules of the game, and again, check your own rules or your system's rules to determine what type of terrain is suitable. Below is a list of materials and tools you will need.

Materials and Equipment:

Polystyrene or styrofoam

Corrugated cardboard

White glue

All-purpose filler or spackling

Sharp knife of some kind (I use a box cutter)

Scissors

Toothpicks

Gravel

Rocks

Dirt or sand

Paints (I use poster paints for making terrain - since terrain uses up such large amounts of paint, I don't want to use my small bottles of acrylics)

Needle-nose pliers

Wire

Thin cardboard (like from a cereal box)

Little bits of plastic, like excess sprue or unneeded model parts. These come in handy for extra details. You never know what may be perfect for that piece of terrain or diorama later on - so never throw anything away! (Half joking.)

Making Hills:

Hills are possibly the most useful type of terrain you can make; they are simple, easy, quick, and make your wargame board both good-looking and effective. There are a variety of types of terrain you will need. You can make shallow, low hills using cardboard, or higher hills using styrofoam.

Below is a simple hill I made from nothing more than cardboard, styrofoam, glue, filler, paint, and some gravel. I first glued two sheets of cardboard on top of each other to make a firm base, then glued a molded chunk of Styrofoam on top of that. To make the crags (far right) I just hacked and carved at one side of the Styrofoam to make them appear rocky. I slathered some filler over the whole thing, filling in the gaps and giving it texture. Always use filler on Styrofoam; it will cover up the pebbled, unnatural surface of the Styrofoam. I painted the crags gray, then drybrushed in a lighter shade of gray. Finally, I glued on a few pieces of gravel in the niches. I painted the rest of the hill green, and flocked it.

Shadows and Highlights:
This simple and easy technique will do wonders to your terrain. This technique could also be called "instant 3D-ifying," because it brings out the raised

areas of a surface, making it appear more three-dimensional. After painting your base coat on, make a simple shadow wash out of water mixed with a dark color of paint. Slather this over the terrain. The wash works the same way that it does on miniatures - it pools in the crevices and hollows, creating shadows where shadows would normally appear. It is necessary to do this because often your models will be too small for real shadows to form from light that falls on them, so you have to make your own. After the shadows are dry, dip just the tip of your brush in a lighter shade of the same color you used for the base coat. For my crags, above, I used a light gray to highlight the darker gray of the base coat. Wipe off most of the paint, so the brush is almost completely dry, then lightly brush it against the surface that you wish to paint. You may need to do this a few times to achieve the right effect. The way this works is that the brush will only really press against the raised portions of the surface, and leave the deeper recesses darker. This creates an instant highlight-and-shadow effect. After this, you can repeat the process again using an even lighter color, if you wish.

Making buildings:

Buildings are very simple, and all you really need is cardboard, glue, filler, and paint. (It is nice to have cardboard of varying thickness). Always work from a picture; this will help you to stay on track and make your building more realistic. You can make many different types of buildings: houses, bunkers, huts, shacks, etc.

Afghan Dwelling
The picture below shows an Afghan dwelling I made to go with my Caesar 1/72 Modern US Elite Force H058.

I first made the base out of a few sheets of cardboard (always use more than one layer of cardboard for your base - it'll make it more stable) then made the building on top of it. Always try to give your bases interesting shapes; a square or rectangular base will look to unnatural and unrealistic. Notice how I made a broken-down wall to one side; this helps make the building look like its in a war zone. The picture to the right shows a detail of this wall. Notice the pipe that is sticking out of the wall. I made this pipe from a piece of left-over sprue. Keep old bits of plastic or unused pieces from you models! These will come in useful when creating terrain and buildings.
I wiped filler all over the building to give it a weathered, sandy texture.

The finished building.

Medieval Building
This building was time consuming but relatively easy. The whole thing was constructed out of a double layer of thin cardboard (I used a cereal box) and painted in acrylic folk art paints. The tiles on the roof were made from more cardboard, cut into strips and then notched to create the individual tiles. The bush to one side of the house was made from a piece of sponge, and the cobblestones out front were made from small pieces of card with filler on top, and drybrushed.

Be creative! Just looking around your house, I bet you will find innumerable great materials to make your wargame terrain. Anything goes.

Trees:
Trees can be a bit trickier, but they are essential to any battlefield. Look out the nearest window. Unless you live in a big city, there is probably a tree within site. Trees are omnipresent, and every battlefield needs them.
Because home made trees are difficult, time consuming, and generally don't look good anyway, it's usually better just to buy them. Woodland Scenics have a lot of options for buying premade or DIY kits for a wide range of tree types. I recommend basing them individually, so that you can move them anywhere you want and/or put them on top of other terrain features (such as hills) but you can also base them in groves or copses.
However, if you are undeterred by my warning and still want to make your own trees, here's a method that works pretty well.

The Twisty Tie Tree
For this tree, you just need a bunch of twisty ties. You will need a roll of these, about 4 or 5 inches wide, all connected. Bunch them all up together in a roll and twist them, forming one sturdy trunk. Splay out the tips of the wire on both ends, creating branches and roots. Stick the tree on a cardboard base and paint it. You may need to put masking tape on the trunk before you paint it. Put filler around the roots and paint and flock the base. You can flock the branches, if you want, but this tree generally looks better without leaves - i.e., a dead tree.

Other terrain features:

There's no end of scenery, terrain, and buildings that you can create for your battlefield. Of course, if you're making terrain with a certain wargame in mind, you will have to check the requirements and restrictions for those rules, but apart from that, the sky's the limit. Depending on what time period or universe you are modelling for, the possibilities are virtually endless. Hills, trees, etc come in useful just about anywhere, anytime, but buildings and other man-made structures will depend on the historical period or nation. Below are some random pieces of terrain that I have created:

This is a ridiculously easy and very handy piece of terrain. Using a double-layer cardboard base, glue a few rocks down and sprinkle sand into wet filler around them. Paint the rocks gray, the ground brown or gray, and flock.

These crags were made with fantasy miniatures in mind. They were made from a few uneven chunks of styrofoam covered in filler and painted, then drybrushed and shadowed extensively.

This marsh was originally a pond. However, the pond looked lame, so I made it into a marsh. Making water is deceptively simple: just paint on few coats of a water color and layer on coats of varnish or white glue until it's shiny and watery. The little island things in the middle were made from a gloppy mix of filler, white glue, and sand, painted and flocked. The clumps of weeds were made from toothbrush bristles stuck onto a blob of glue and painted.

Another very easy piece of terrain. I just stuck four toothpick halves into a cardboard base, then glued more toothpick halves across them and drybrushed.