Strictly speaking, terrain isn’t technically needed for a wargame – a few pieces of cardboard with labels on can play the role of buildings and walls. However, terrain makes games much more interesting, giving you something to actually fight over rather. While big buildings and rolling hills help shape the gameplay and draw the eye, smaller items and scatter terrain brings the game to life. Its makes urban streets feel like somewhere people live, adds detail to otherwise empty plains and provide vital cover in skirmish games.
There are two sets of impressions coming for scatter and smaller terrain items. This first article will cover plastic and resin items while the second will look at everything made from MDF.
Spectre Trash Piles
This set from Spectre was the first bits of terrain I picked up and they are pretty fantastic. The pack includes three cardboard boxes, three small rubbish bags and a large bag pile. All the terrain pieces have flat bottoms while the large pile also has flat back, perfect for fitting next to a building in a crowded alley. Both parts are great for adding some decoration to a street scene or terrifying your opponents by using them as possible IED sites.
Spectre Oil Drums
All games that involve shooting need barrels (especially red ones) and these are great. Each pack includes 10 barrels. They have a nice level of detail and paint up nicely. The only major issues is you can see some casting lines and a few of the barrels have some missing rims after some use.
Spectre Barricades – Alfa
Designed by The Lazy Forger, these barricades are amazing and an easy way to meet the chest high wall requirements of any mission. The pack includes six full size barricades and one partial barricade. Each one is unique and full of detail, really giving a war-torn feel to a board. The barricades are flat edged so really fit best forming straight lines.
Spectre Barricades – Bravo
Another Lazy Forger designed product, these vertical barricades provide full height cover. The pack includes six walls and once each is unique. They are also filled with evocative detail, such as the exposed re-bar inside the concrete and the masses of bullet holes. The walls have a concave edge on one side and a convex edge on the other, letting them fit together and hiding most of the join.
To add, both of these products make me really excited for what The Lazy Forger is doing next – Brick Walls! These are instantly useful and will make both building modification and board setup even easier.
Spectre Ammo Boxes
Not yet on general release, these hard cases were available at Salute 2017 and will presumably coming soon. There are a few casting lines that need trimming down but the level of detail on them is ridiculous for such a small item. These will look great when building a military outpost or wanting some objectives for teams to fight over.
TTCombat Portable Toilet Set
Most of the time your figures are answering the call of duty but sometimes they might need to answer the call of nature. These resin portaloos (coming in a pack of four) are simple and do the job, making temporary military installations or building sites slightly more realistic and also adding some full height cover. They are one piece of resin and feel really solid. Luckily they also don’t include the smell.
TTCombat Bank Accessories
Money, it makes the world go round. This pack is designed to add-on to an MDF building, letting you fill it with loot. The vault door and safes are really cool but the gold bars in various combinations are spot on for objective markers. If you’re wanting something more mobile the cash sacks are just the right size for using as markers, letting you know which of your troops have grabbed the swag.
TTCombat Bank Accessories 2
The second part of bank accessories are more security focused. It includes two burglar alarms, two piece security cameras (allowing for some careful placing and angling) and pieces required for a security console (such as a keyboard and a screen). Unlike the Bank Accessories 1, this one is very much focused on upgrading other pieces of terrain. However, it is very effective at this job and gives you a lot of bang for your buck.
The resin stuff is great for objects on the smaller side, but once you start using cheap laser cut MDF and scatter terrain can start doing some really cool stuff for the slightly bigger things. Come back in two weeks for part two where I’ll cover MDF constructs including shipping containers, pallets and more!