I've spent the entire weekend doing jobs around the house, so have had almost no time to spend on the ACW river terrain section that I've been working on, apart from some farting about with the railroad embankments which have been a bit of a pain to get right. However, all this cutting up of cork tiles has got me thinking about using the same approach for my stagnant Sandbox Skirmish post-colonial project, which stalled last year when the board I had built for it warped out of shape.
The cork tile and mdf panel method I've used on the river terrain seems to have worked well, so I have come up with a plan to make a selection of terrain modules for a semi-desert, arid setting, based on 15mm modern skirmish wargaming with the No End In Sight rules. The idea would be to make a laminate of an mdf baseboard, then a double layer of 4mm cork tile, allowing me to cut into the top layer to make gullies, ditches and dried up stream beds, for example.
On top of the laminated layers, I can also add additional cork tile contours to model higher areas of ground, raised banks or roads, with everything designed to fit together at the margins, making a truly modular terrain system. This is nothing new, of course, but the cork tile is ideal for the purpose, being cheap, readily available and pre-textured for a cracked, arid ground surface. The whole lot would be painted in artists acrylics to avoid the warping that I've found happens when I used emulsion paints.
The theme would probably be North African, very much like the terrain in Mali or Niger, with a largely flat or gently rolling profile covered in scrub, acacia trees, grass tufts and the like. This way I can use the boards for a generic North African or East African setting, ideal for my 15mm French or US forces, or for the Gulf region including Aden. The terrain I've already made can be adapted to match, along with my British figures and vehicles, so nothing I've already done will go to waste. I could even use it for AK47.
Sounds like a plan to me?
