Terrain, what is it?

So as the title may of given away this week's post will be about terrain...

I want to split this into a few sections


  1. Making your own terrain
  2. Pre made terrain (GW and other companies)
  3. What terrain can bring to your games


Ah beautiful a chest high wall, just what I needed!




Thinking of making your own terrain? If you are, you need to make a plan. What is it you want to make, how big do you want these things to be, how many of these things do you need/want? If you don't know these things you want to have a good long think, again from personal experience I would suggest starting with "scatter terrain" these are the little bits that are well scattered across the battlefield. Things like crates, barrels, small clumps of foliage, hedges, and tank traps. I think you get the idea, we are shooting at the small stuff that will give cover saves to infantry, break up lines of advance for tanks, but won't totally block line of sight.

A small selection of my scatter terrain.

Now I'm not going to go into the "how to" for building stuff (there are far better tutorials than I could ever do out there on the web), but I am going to give you a quick example of some of my scatter terrain that cost me very little, and didn't take long at all to make up.


These are made from spare square bases from the older Games Workshop fantasy range(I'm sure there are other suppliers out there). I used 2 bases ( the ones pictured are 20mm square, but easily scaled up for any size) then cut 4 pieces of plasticard (2 pieces 18mm long and 2 pieces 20mm long), sticking each part down along an edge of the base alternating between the 18mm and the 20mm pieces.

Hope this gives you some inspiration to make some crates of your own!

So next up is pre-made terrain. There are plenty of options about where to get this from, so I'm going to start with Games Workshop's terrain. Now as you can see there is a huge range so I'm going to touch on the kits I have seen, or built in person.

Battlefield Accessories Set is the cheapest set and great for scatter terrain, not much to be said about this set, but with some imagination you can do a lot with quite a small kit.

Aegis Defence Line, again a nice little kit, has some rules and the Quad Cannon is a beast for taking down fliers.


Munitorum Armoured Containers, now I love this set! With three large cargo containers, nine barrels and twelve crates, this kit is possibly one of the best value for money terrain boxes from Games Workshop in my opinion.


Imperial Sector, as one of the pricer kits it is sometimes tempting to overlook this one, but if you ever get chance to pick this up do it! There is so many options on how to build it, basically you get panels that slot together along with flooring and wall sections, giving you almost limitless combinations.



The only other pre-made terrain I have personal experience with is the TT Combat stuff. Its nice stuff, made from MDF, not quite as modular as the GW stuff, but well-made, sturdy, and they make all sorts from skips to tower blocks.

Now from where you can get your terrain from to what it brings to your games!

Terrain is important to your games for two reasons (for me at least), the first reason being that it adds a level of immersion to the game. By this I mean it gives you an idea of why your army/gang/team are there, for example 'my army is here because the "Evil" aliens have slaughtered the population of this city and taken it for themselves'. Or 'my army wants to capture the innocent peoples of this village to sacrifice to our dark gods!' The other reason would be for the game itself, for example Warhammer 40k has mechanic where you can use cover (like walls or barrels) to give you a save against things you wouldn't usually get a save against. Giving your army an extra level of survivability so you can stay in the fight for longer.

So there it is! Have you made your own terrain? How do you use your terrain in your games?

See you next time from the table of a Plastic Addict!

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