War of the Flamin’ Roses (Terrainfest 2025)

What village would be without a wheat field nearby? Not this one at least!

This was quick and fun. I cut up some squares of cheap doormats made of coconut rough material, glued them to EPVC bases, added a little filler to cover the gap and Bob’s your uncle!

Obviously I had given myself a task that was too quick and easy, so I decided to add a scarecrow. I took an archer from Perry Miniatures, but the legs off, glued grass tufts to the various ends and finished by drilling a hole and sticking a bamboo skewer right up somewhere very impolite. Also quite fun, at least for me. The archer may have other ideas, but he is busy scaring off crows, so no need to ask him.

Still avoiding more buildings, I wanted to add some marsh(es) to the table, to act aas difficult terrain.

I figured that marshes/ bogs tend to have smaller sections before you hit the big pond/ puddle/ marsh?  Look, I am from Western Australia, so my personal experience with this kind of geography is largly abstract and conceptual I am afraid, so I was leaning on descriptions from fantasy novels and photos on the internet.

One thing the photos also suggested to me is that the water isn’t so dirty really? All the wargaming terrain I found online seemed to treat marshes and swamps as interchangeable terms, but I am not sure that is the case.  Anyway, accordingly I painted the water a deep green-blue, rather than the green-brown you see swamps painted in.

I added a thin layer of UV resin to add a little depth and water- shinyness to them as well.

I needed time to recover from timber frames of the building, so I thought I would try my hand at some scratch built terrain, starting with some height variation.

The Ruckus rule book suggests that you would have hillocks rather than hills per se, so I have kept both of these to single height, just above head level.

I thought I would have one with more gentle slopes, and another with rocky sides. I used a handheld hot wire cutter on XPS foam for the basic shapes, then glued large rocks (also cut from xps foam) along with smaller rocks and cork rubble on the sides of one, leaving a wee path up. If I did it again, I think I would try less to make the distribution of the rocks random, and more focus on large rocks at the bottom, getting smaller as you go up. Oh well, lessons learned and all that.

I have once again included a photo showing the table progress.

Here is the first of the buildings.

I have decided to not keep notes as I paint each building, to help encourage me to play around with the colours a bit, add a little natural variety.

Good lord, but I underestimated how tedious painting all the wooden trim on these Tudor houses would be. They are just three dimensional enough that you have to paint all the sides of each beam, but so thin that it is a real chore trying to get it done neatly.

I have included a photo to show you the massive (ahem) effect this one building has on the terrain!

Right!

Last year, I had a big old entry where I built a huge amount of terrain to play Gangs of Rome. It was awesome. It took awhile. So long in fact, that I left it to very close to midnight on the last day to enter…

… and then after I finished putting everything in, it all fell apart, because of some digital nonsense. At that point I had work the next day, so I just told myself “I won’t leave it so late next time!” and went to bed. So, here I am , a whole ONE DAY EARLIER than last time, putting this years Christmas project in. That, my freinds, is measurable, quantifiable progress.

Anyway, as my project description states I have just painted a warband for Here’s the Ruckus, but have no terrain to play it on, just the 4×4 mat and the three tree bases in the picture. Should probably do something about that, so here we are. I figure that a lot of what I make will be useful for other games (such as the looming shadow of Silver Bayonet), and even bigger scal games like Kings of War. So really, by doing lots now, I am saving time later … right?

I have begged a very kind friend to print me a bunch of houses and so forth, which I bought from Keycapas on MyMiniFactory, and have mebarked to build the rest myself from scratch. Which I have nere done before, so please be kind! This year there is a 7 month old child in the mix, so my progress was not as fast as last year!