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Sunday, January 02, 2011

Terrain for Multiple Scales

Now that I am working in multiple scales - 6mm (still have a number of these troops), 15mm, 28mm, and 42mm - I have begun to worry about terrain. I have always been rather ... bad about having good looking terrain. Probably because I game at recreation centers, community centers, and such, and so my terrain has to survive the travel. A fellow gamer in the next city solved that problem: you have two sets of terrain, one  for traveling and one for home. Okay, I'll do that (even though it now doubled the amount of terrain I needed).

Still, with four scales, do I need four sets of terrain (times two)? I decided to buy some model railroading trees (off of eBay, of course) of various sizes and do some experiments.

In the first picture you can see some trees that are 1.25"/35mm high. I've glued three to a 1" wooden disk and it looks pretty good as a copse of 6mm trees. What I also noticed is that it look pretty good as a bush for 42mm troops. For 28mm troops, the lack of foliage at the bottom means it no longer makes a convincing (high) bush or scrub tree, but is still usable. For the 15mm troops, the height is fine for small trees, but the trunks are just a little too small. So, they would have to represent new growth trees or heavy, tall brush.

In this second picture I have a single tree 3"/75mm high glued to a 1" disk. For 42mm, it looks like an acceptable decorative shrub or bush, like for a tall hedge. For 28mm it is an acceptable tall tree with a very think trunk. For 15mm, its height is good and the trunk size acceptable, if still a little too thin. For 6mm the trunk size is fine, but the tree height huge, but not overly so.

As I get more terrain I will certainly post more pictures, comparing them against the figures in the various scales, so you can get an idea of their value.

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