Building the Road to War: Modular Terrain Boards - Part 3

This post addresses the addition of of stream, river, and some hill terrain modules for my 1950s Cold War Germany terrain project.  The  modular terrain design concept was presented in part 1, and the general construction and finish methods are addressed in part 2 of this series of posts.  This post will mostly address design of the moduler waterways, basic hill modules, and few special pieces. 

Streams

First I'll tackle the streams streams.  I've long used a rather narrow 5/16" wide stream system with my terrain, which works universally with 6mm to 15mm scale figures, though is a bit narrow for larger scales.  The stream is routed 3/8" deep into the foam with a Dremel and router attachment, and is centered at three inches inset from the near end of the tile.

The centerline of the stream is located on the tile, the edges or banks of the streambed located, and a loose path of the stream drawn on the tile, before routing the actual stream path.  The path can be widened between the ends of the tiles, but always maintains the same location and profile on the edges of the tile.

This a 6" wide tile (by 12" long), so the stream is centered 

on the short end of the panel.  On the typical 12' square tile,

 the stream would be inset 3" from the near end of the tile.

The stream system layout is much like that of the road design, except that the stream path between the edges of the tile is more irregular.  The basic tiles types are straight, diagonal, and bends.  Note that there are three types of bends, a broad, tight, and combined bend.

A mirror image of the Combined Bend shown above completes all of 

the bend configurations.  Roads can also be added as desired.

Stream tiles after routing stream bed.

Once the path is routed into the the tile, the banks of the edges are sanded to a 45 degree angle, and are cut about 3/16" deep into the the foam, leaving a vertical walled 3/16" channel for the stream bed.  In between the edges, all sorts of sanding and shaping can be done, including small islands in the stream, lower areas representing little floodplains, boggy areas, etc.

The stream tile edge profile

Stream tiles after sanding.

Completed stream tiles

Stream Bridges

The bridges over the strams were made by simply cutting a slot with a hobby knife and sliding a retaining wall into place made from a piece of 1/8" wide foam.  Two bridges are smooth and painted to be  of concrete, and two had a stone pattern etched in with a ball point pen.

With concrete retaining walls.

With stone retaining walls

If the terrain is intended for a single or narrow range of scales, you can add rocks and whanot to the streams, though I avoid this, as rocks that look fine in 15 to 28mm, don't always look right at 6mm.  Additionally they can interfer with the "stackability" of the foam tiles, which may or may not be a consideration. 

Rivers

River tiles are similar to the streams, except that in this instance, the waterway will be three inches wide, the tiles with roads will be dedicated to 6mm, but roadless river tiles will work in any scale.  The three inch water obstacle may not seem very wide, but given the game scales that I use in 6mm, it will represent a 30 to 150 meter wide waterway.

The rivers are cut with the dremel/router, as per the streams, with the river bed 3/8 inch deep and 3 inches wide.  The terrain is shaped and sanded in the same way as previous tiles, with the bank edge profile cut 3/16 inch deep into the routed bank, and extents on a gradule rise to a point 1 inch from the edge of the router cut. Both the streams and rivers are painted after the rest of the tile, and coated with two coats of artist's acrylic gloss medium, prior to flocking the tile.

The routed river bed.

The river tile edge profile design above, and result below.

Sanded river tiles with completed bank profiles.

Completed river tiles

 

River Bridges

The river bridges were mostly constructed from varying thicknesses of insulation foam.  Pathways for the water were sanded with Tuff Grit sanding sticks, with detail glued in place with matte medium, and pinned until dry.  Then they were coated in acrylic pastes and painted.

The bridge in the distance above and to the left below used a 

piece of sheet styrene plastic for the road bed, with a strip glued 

underneath to represent the supporting structure and strips glued 

in place for the retaining walls.  The lower supports were made 

from foam.

Views of the finished bridges.  The bridges fit into slots cut into

 the foam tiles, and can be removed so that destroyed bridge 

models can be placed if needed.

Road/Slope Tiles

To make the new 6mm roads compatible with my existing hill/slope tiles, I needed to add a few basic road/slope tiles.  These use a 1" rise over 6" run on "straight slope" tiles with a road running up them.  

Basic 12" slope tile edge profile.

The road and slope are both laid out on the tile top and edges, 1 inch rise over 6 inches of run, and the basic slope edges cut.  I just use a hacksaw blade, though an hobby miter box saw may be a better choice to get a constant slope.  I then shape the slope with out cutting into the road bed of the tile, Once the slope is cut, the road bed of shaped to blend into the slope.

The road bed and edge profile drawn onto the tile.

The edge slope cut a hack saw blade.  Tuff-Grit files to clean

 up the edge profile.

With the rest of the slope roughed out with the hack saw blade. 

The road bed is left to be cut later.

The slope is further roughed out with a Surform tool.

The road bed is roughed out with the hack raw, the Surform, 

and the Tuff Grit files.

A different angle of the roughed out road bed.

The cut along the road bed, and ditches are further shaped

 with the Tuff-Grit files

The tile is sanded.

Another view of the sanded tile, better showing how the slope 

across the tile blends with the standard edge profile.

I made four total road/slope tiles, two each with the road set 

to the left or right side of the tile.

New road slope tiles with my older hill/slope tiles.  Note the 

road slope tile stacked on a regular flat road tile to complete 

the road across the span of the tile.

Finished road slope tiles.

Towns

I made two small town tiles in this batch of tiles, each based on towns that will be on the first tabletop in upcoming battles.  The towns are shown below, mated together, such that they could represent a larger town.

I started off by drawing a three inch grid on the tiles, then transferring the primary town roads from a 1:25,000 German army map from the 1950s.  The primary roads were drawn onto the tile in 1" width, and then secondary roads were added.  The tiles were lightly sanded, coated with acrylic paste, then painted, and flocked.

Odd Sized Tiles

I also made some odd sized tiles for filling in spaces created by some of the diagonal road tiles.  Half and quarter tiles, measuring 12"x6" and 6"square.  

6"x12' and 6" square tiles.

Some of the odd sized tiles completed.

Completed Terrain Tiles

The views below show completed tiles from this batch, demonstrating how the roads fit together with the odd sized tiles.

The second view shows the tiles spaced apart to more readily 

show how they fit together.  One of the town tiles can be seen 

in the foreground of the views above.

This batch totaled 65 tiles making about 51 square feet of terrain.  For games, I set up the tiles on top of a sheet of felt, which keeps the tiles from sliding around on the table top.

That completes the tiles for use in gaming battles set on the North German Plain.  The next group (sometime later in the new year) of tiles will be geared for games set in the Fulda Gap and other more hilly parts of Germany. 

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year's day.