A Box of Wargaming Terrain

I've been doing a fair bit of sorting out of my gaming stuff recently.  In fact I am reassessing what I play and what I need to play it, with the intention of thinning out my stuff and having coherent collections.  One aspect of this is terrain.

I have mentioned several times recently that I want to have a good look at what terrain I have and how I use it.  One problem is that I have a lot in various boxes and piles, and I can't always find it when I am preparing for a game.  It seemed a good idea years ago to put all my trees in one box, but now I can't find that box, so I have to do without trees (or use the few scruffy ones I can find, along with odd scaled models).
I also like to theme terrain to a particular army or location.  When everything is lumped together, or spread across the house, it becomes difficult to maintain this coherent look when setting up a battlefield.
Finally, in the past I've been less than good at storing my stuff, (hence why a lot has gone missing) so quite a bit of terrain has been damaged.

I'm trying to address this, so I've decided that I will have a series of boxes of terrain.  Each one will be built to a theme, so when I want a game, I just have to grab the relevant box.  I'll organise each box so that there is a surplus of terrain.  If everything is on a 6 foot by 4 foot table, it will be cramped for a normal wargame such as Kings of War, the idea is to choose items from the box, say about 75% of them.  However, for skirmish games like Vanguard, where denser terrain is good, simply put everything on a smaller table.

When I was a printer, my boss used to say 'Preparation Prevents Pretty Poor Performance' (well, he didn't say 'Pretty', but you get the idea).  So I have scoured T'interweb and various wargames books to come up with lists to guide my terrain collecting and building.  Useful resources include Epic Dwarf for the amount and general size of terrain pieces (though definitely not the set up as it's far too random for my liking), and the Battlefield chapter in my battered sixth edition Warhammer Fantasy Battles book for ideas for theming terrain.  Here's an example of the list I drew up for a League of Rhordia themed terrain set. The list shows the maximum for a set, a normal battlefield might have less items on it.

RHORDIA
No.	Item	Size	Height	Special	Notes
1	Hill	12” x 9”	1	-	Rounded, grassy
1	Multipart hill	16” x 12”	1 or 2	-	Four part for edge/corner use or one large hill
2	Woods	9” x 9”	3 or 4	Difficult	Deciduous trees, orchards
3	Hedges or fences	3 x 4” long sections	1	Obstacle	Hedges or fences
2	Fields	6” x 4”	0	Difficult	Crops, poss with hedges/fences
1	Building	8” x 6”	3 or 4	Impassable	Villa, inn etc. or Halfling home
1	Building	6” x 4”	2	Impassable	Farm, barn
1	Building	6” x 6”	5	Impassable	Tower/fort
1	Water	6” x 6”	0	Diff/ Imp	Duck pond or lake

NB dimensions given in scale inches, so the pieces will be smaller for a 15mm terrain set.

The idea is that the terrain gives the feel of a settled rural environment, just ripe for an invasion of Herd, Orcs, Ogres or similar.  In fact, I'd do a very similar set for my Kingdoms of Men.

I decided to begin the project with this set of 15mm terrain as that is the stuff I have the least of, and despite being mostly recent purchases or builds, its a very rag-tag collection.
I've got some of this already.  All the buildings are already built, and you can see an example of one here.  Likewise I've already build a good number of hedges (see here for how I did it) and I painted up some comercial fences a while back.  I have some of those cheap trees from China via eBay which will do.  Eventually they will be moved to an Ancient Greece set as I have some orange trees and trees in blossom on the way. I will make bases that delineate the woods, a pond should be easy, and then there are fields and hills to build.

I've planned the whole set to fit inside a 9 litre Really Useful Box, so the hills are cut so that they occupy a layer at the bottom of the box and everything else sits on top.  The multipart hill fits nicely in the corners, and the single hill sits in between.  When I come to do a set for 28mm I'll simply scale up and use a bigger box.

I've tried setting this lot out on a table using paper templates for the various items, and I think it looks OK.  I'll tweak things a little, so for instance I'm going to make the fields so that they can make one large or two small fields, and the hedge sections will fit around them if I want.  I might also make extra woods and fields if space allows.  I'll certainly do a few extra decorative pieces that have no effect in the game (or can act as objectives, especially in skirmish games, such as gallows, signposts, piles of sacks or barrels and the like.

You might notice that there is no running water in the set.  That's because I'm not quite sure how I would do it, though for 15mm I might just use blue felt painted and with some rocks etc.  I'm sure to need a river or stream in a later set, or even as a late addition to this one.  I'll do roads in a similar manner, just using brown or grey felt, but since they have no effect in the rules I use, they aren't a top priority.

I'm hoping to get this lot done pretty soon, especially since I have a fair bit made already.  I'll post my progress soon.

*EDIT* Here's the completed League of Rhordia box of terrain.