6mm/10mm Terrain

A few weeks ago I was recuperating from a nasty cold, wasn't really able to paint, things were annoying. So I decided to make some very simple terrain pieces and things got a bit out of hand.

Single Trees

Years ago I had bought a few bags of small trees off ebay. They were sold as Z-scale, so roughly 1/220th scale. They were rather cheap, but look OK and come in 3 different shades of green. 

In the end I had 70 single-based trees

This seemed like something I was able to do in my state then: take a washer or coin, fire up the old hot glue gun, glue the tree to the washer/coin, add some basing to connect it all, paint the base, drybrush it, done. I also sprayed some of the trees a bit from above with various shades of green for added variety and more natural looking green tones.

I experimented with cutting some of the trees a bit here and there so they vary in size and shape a little. But overall, most of them I just took out of the bag and glued them right on. 

These trees are very handy for putting orchards on the table, just single trees randomly scattered across the table, put them along roads or fields and so on. These don't really work as 'terrain pieces' with a major impact on the game, but they add a lot to the look of any gaming table and will work for 6mm and 10mm games. 

Forests

I was pretty pleased with myself after having completed those, and somehow I got into the idea of making smaller scale terrain now. 

In 2016 and 2017 I painted a sizeable 6mm Napoleonic French army (for my own gaming) and a few weeks ago I had gotten hold of quite a few GHQ Microarmour WW2 Germans. This helped my impetus to get some terrain done as well of course.

For a long time I had planned to make some denser forests for small scale wargaming, and it was time to take the plunge. All the materials I needed were present: clump foliage, corrugated cardboard, hot glue gun, toothpicks. 

It's a very simple recipe, you could call it simplistic. It's basically an idea I nicked from here: https://www.6mmacw.com/forests.html

...but in a more crude fashion by essentially turning the thing on its head, thus eliminating the base.

In the end I made some fields from pieces of felt and added them to the layout. Also very simple stuff. Just take a piece of felt, cut it up, colour it as required. 

The last part can be a bit of work. On most of the pieces I used spray colour followed by a drybrush. Make sure to give the felt two or even three layers of paint, as the material is 'puffy' and you want to soak it a bit in the paint, otherwise you have a brown layer over a poisonous green (in my case) core, and that paint will rub off along with single fibres in handling and whatnot.

Especially with 6mm terrain I strongly suggest having a look at aerial shots from regions you want to depict on your table. This will not only help getting a feel for the look, but also ideas for what to add and so on.

This of course only covers maybe a quarter of a 6' by 4' table, but I hope it gave you some easily reproachable ideas.

Stay tuned, as I will showcase some photos of this terrain along with some minis next!