hills and deserts and rivers

1. Hills

Foam - Adrian was, I believe, speaking of 4x8 
sheets of insulation foam that comes in varying 
thicknesses (0.5" to about 2") which you can 
buy at your local builder. You have to see what 
you have access to. He talks of "blue foam" and 
there is "pink foam", "green foam", and "white 
foam". I find the white stuff too granular for my 
taste, and the pink too compressible. Blue and 
green both work well - Adrian uses blue, I use 
green. Now, being in the back end of the back 
end of the back end of nowhere, you might 
have to search for equivalent products. But it 
can typically be cut with a hot knife or hot wire, 
flocked with flock or painted green (beware any 
paints that include solvents! If you want to use 
sprays - go to your locale craft store and get 
foam safe paint!) or other colours with relative 
ease. And it makes great terrain. Geohex uses 
"white foam" but I have found it a little more 
susceptible to damage than my own terrain 
made from the "green foam". Mostly because 
the geohex terrain has some sharp (hence very 
thin) edges which do not like meeting any other 
object (such as box edges in transport, etc) 
very much. 

Things to look for: Cells in foam not too 
granular. Foam not too compressible (some 
stuff will collapse if a gamer decides to apply 
even moderate pressure). Not too expensive. 
Thin enough to be cut by your chosen tool. 
You may, I note, have to experiment. I have had 
excellent luck with terrain for Grey Day and 
other scenarios, but I had to try a number of 
paint types first. 

2) Deserts

Mike Sarno showed me the grassmat he uses. 
He took an green felt and then used either 
brown and black markers or paints to mark it 
up. It looks good once you add other terrain 
onto it. 

I too will be doing a desert mat soon. I expect I 
shall try to find a yellowish felt ( ideally one that 
looks like it has another colour of fibre 
blended.... these make the best starting point ) 
and then I will use standard paints or maybe 
my airbrush to lay down (via holding the 
sprayer several feet off and doing this OUTSIDE) 
a speckling of black (very light), a speckling of 
brown (a bit heavier), and then I might use a 
large brush with some green paint on the tips 
(think not sopping, but a bit more than 
drybrushing) to lay down patches of green here 
and there via the vertical dab. 

To find what works, buy some of the 12" 
squares in roughtly the same shade, 
experiment on them before touching your large 
desert cloth. 

Then, you can use the "foam" mentioned in the 
hills sections to build some dunes (ideally you 
have a hot knife/wire.... a neat hot wire cutter 
can be procured for about $30 US) and (once 
you've laid a basecoat) follow the same general 
speckling technique to make some reasonably 
matching sand dunes or hills. Of course, you 
can cut some more aggressive faces in, and 
paint them a light brown and drybrush with a 
lighter sand to give you "sandstone" or use 
some of the craft "sandstone" paint to give a 
textured finish. 

I mean, if you own any FSE troops, where ELSE 
would the Legion Etrange Colonial be fighting 
than some gawd-awful waterless hot-in-
daytime, cold-at-night desert? :)  (And there 
might even be an Honest Abdul's!)

3) Rivers

I saw these, and am partway done construction 
of my own. They don't flex like Adrian's rivers, 
but I actually like them better. Buy 1/8" 
hardboard, cut into sections 2-3" wide. Glue on 
a bank made from either plaster, putty, or hot-
knife cut foam on either side. Paint banks 
brown/green and flock. Paint base of river dark 
blue, and gradually drybrush over other shades 
of blue. For artistic merit, stick a few pebbles 
along rivercourse and do some white water 
swirling around them (for geological 
correctness, all eddies from stones should 
seem to go in roughly the same direction....). 
Finish the river by applying 2 or 3 layers of 
gloss varnish. Gives depth, looks AWESOME. 
Might even wash final varnish layer with thin 
layer of blue ink. Thus, rigid, durable, easily 
transportable river sections. 

Tomb Raider

---------------------------------------------
Thomas Barclay
Co-Creator of http://www.stargrunt.ca 
Stargrunt II and Dirtside II game site

No Battle Plan Survives Contact With Dice.
-- Mark 'Indy' Kochte