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Introduction

It may be true that in war, massive armies converge on an open battlefield, complete with rolling hills and vast green grass as far as the eye can see. No doubt, many battles were fought with just these simple conditions, but this is hardly the only backdrop, both in history, and in fiction. Avoidance of obstacles, terrain, or whatever else you want to call them, is nearly impossible, and besides, placing things on the battlefield for armies to go around makes things a tad more interesting than simple forward movement.

When I began playing Mage Knight, it didn’t take long for me to envision the well-defined miniature landscapes I’ve seen in store displays and magazines. As stunning as they were, however, I didn’t have a firm grasp on just how they were constructed. Chances are, if you’re new at wargaming, you don’t have that great an idea either, which is why I’m willing to lend you a hand. In the hopes of beginning a small series on wargame terrain-building, I’m going to run you through a simple exercise, and will give pointers along the way. If feedback is good, I’ll continue the mini-series with another type of terrain in the future, and we’ll go from there.

Concept

In Mage Knight, there are tournament legal “standardized” terrain shapes. To both meet the standardized size and shape requirement, as well as to serve uses in other wargames, I’m going to settle on a simple shape for our first exercise: a long “curtain” wall. The point will be to create “blocking” terrain that cannot be shot over, nor passed through, and be long enough to slow units down when placed in their path.

While there are numerous styles of walls, from tied wooden pikes to boulders to bullet-ridden slabs of metal, I’m going to go with a basic “brick” style wall with a ruined feel to it, ala post-battle or “ancient civilization” ruins. This should work well with a number of wargames, and fit the theme of most battles adequately.

Building

The most common building block used when constructing terrain is styrofoam. There are a number of different kinds of styrofoam, some of which are easier to work with than others. Nonetheless, regardless of what you decide to use, you can shape it fairly easily with common tools, and though some forms of styrofoam have more “give” than others, it really doesn’t matter if you’re using something more flakey, or something more flexible. The idea here is to have something that we can carve without too much hassle.

I decided to grab a chunk of pink styrofoam used to package commercial cellular antennas. It was pretty flexible, and absorbed shock well since it had a good bit of “give”, but this later worked against me. The first step, for me, was to find standardized tournament legal terrain, which I stole from DrMantis, who had a printout of one glued to the back of a strip of cardboard from a pizza box, with a horrible coloring job.

I decided to go with a section of the styrofoam block that had a natural rip in it, likely from being torn at when removed from the packaging box it once called home. Intentionally, I chose to place the template over the most “broken” section of the block, such that the wall would already come with a “ruined” area.

Marking the width of the template, I proceed to cut the section of the wall off the block, giving me a rectangular section about an inch think. The cutting was done with a steak knife with well-defined saw-tooth edges.

The top part of the wall, because of the shape of the block I used, had a very thin section running down a good length of it, and for the most part, the top remained reasonably flat. To add more flavor to the shape of the wall, I cut off the thin section with the steak knife, and then cut the end of the wall such that it had a slight downward angle.

The next step would become the most time-consuming portion of the project. With the basic shape already completed, I wanted the wall to have defined bricks, so I began by “pushing” in lines on the side of the wall with a set of needle-nose pliers. I tried cutting the outlines of the bricks first, with numerous utensils, but the pliers worked best, so I stuck with them. Basically, all I did was make linear indentations by pushing the tip of the pliers into the styrofoam along an imaginary line where I wanted the bricks to show. Every once in a while, I’d use the pliers to rip small chunks out of the wall, usually where two bricks intersected at a corner. This made the bricks stand out much better.

Once the general pattern was complete, I continued to add personality to the wall by removing bricks with the pliers. Carefully plucking away at where I wanted a missing brick to be, I removed enough styrofoam about half an inch deep, such that the wall would appear to be two brick-widths deep. I did this on two spots on one side, a third spot on the edge of that same side, and at one spot on the opposite side, making it look as though one side of the wall (the side where the block was ripped) had sustained more damage than the other.

When I was satisfied with the shape of the wall, I used some acrylic paint to cover the surface of the wall. Using two different brushes (a wider one for general painting, a smaller one to help with the nooks and crannies), I painted the surface using a mix of black and white paint, getting a darker gray tone. I considered using black paint to darken the insides of the cracks, but decided to let light play its tricks and work naturally instead.

The final step in the process involved using a green sponge-like material available at craft stores, or stores that sell artificial flowers. It’s an artificial plant moss that doubles as useable detail for building wargaming terrain. I didn’t need much of it here, since I only wanted to use it as accents. I tore very small bits of the material off (it comes in small fistfuls), and wedged these small pieces in-between the cracks in the wall. I didn’t do it everywhere, just where I saw larger cracks. I used the knife point to push the bits of sponge in far enough that they wouldn’t fall out, yet still be visible.

Conclusion

The completed wall fits the theme well, looking like a ruined section of wall serving as the home for natural growth, and eroding over time. While content with how the wall turned out, there are a couple of things to note that we may want to be careful of in the future.

One, even using a small paintbrush leaves some natural styrofoam color present in the very deep cracks. These could easily be fixed with a bit more time and paint, and perhaps an even tinier paintbrush.

Two, the base of the wall doesn’t merge with the surface it’s standing on. While this makes the wall more generic, such that it can be placed in a variety of settings, a less abrupt end to the wall may not only make it fit in better with a specific environment, but it would probably help with keeping the wall grounded so it doesn’t tip over easily. A strip of thin metal, perhaps, would weight the bottom of the wall down enough to keep it from sliding on a smooth surface.

In the end, the exercise was nonetheless successful, and we have a cheaply-made wall with a small time investment. Final cost, assuming you already have a knife and pliers, should come to about three dollars; paints are about fifty cents per tube, and a pack of inexpensive brushes may go for two dollars. A paper cup makes for an adequate mixing place for the paints, and if you don’t have the other tools, they can be picked up for about five dollars tops.

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