Saturday, July 5, 2014

Terrain for the lazy (and cheap) wargamer

Thinking about terrain for my large-hex game mat, I was wandering around the hardware store downtown when I came across this package of extra coarse sanding discs.  Instead of attempting to sculpt and then paint craters like I've seen others do, and because I don't want to put forth the cash for manufactured scenery, I decided to see how these will look on the playing surface.
Likewise, instead of sawing and painting strips of balsa to represent a network of roads, I could just cut up this wet/dry sandpaper to use as sections of pavement.  Here it is front and back:
Here's the crater for giant games of Ogre laid out on the game mat with four-inch hexes.  Not bad, and I'm fine with using the five-inch circle to represent the hole dug by a cruise missile during the game.  I don't have to worry about it overlapping other terrain, since it turns towns and forest up to three hexes away into rubble.
And the roads look decent as well on the Corsec mat, although I'll need to use sticky tac or something else to keep them in place during game play.  I still need to work on getting the angles correct, but the straight-line sections of highway look fine.
So, I have roads, craters, town hexes and forest hexes for my massive Ogre games.  Now to figure out rivers and swamps ....

4 comments:

pancerni said...

Sometimes simple is the best.

Wouter said...

Looks great, even the colour is good.

Desert Scribe said...

If I let myself get too elaborate, I never finish a project. I'm trying to get a scenario ready for a game convention in November, and I need to remember to Keep It Simple, Stupid.

That being said, I might try to spraypaint and drybrush the craters, and draw some lines on the roads. If I don't get distracted by something else in the meantime ...

Nobody667 said...

Great finds! The sanding disk looks very good as a crater marker. I have used the anti-skid/grip tape for roads (it has a black asphalt look) but its a pain to cut.

I love the OGRE project, its fun to watch come together.