15mm terrain fields are really easy, cheap and fun to work on - while being very thematic for any games featuring large units of armour. They are quite common and you’ve probably seen them before on Flames of War tables or other historical 15mm tabletops.
But here’s a little idea I had for a while that I wanted to share with you all to add some more realism and immersion for your games in 15mm. This is very easy and quick to do and suits multiple games.
You don’t NEED the following vehicles but you should be able to get some for free from any of your friends or club members who play World War III: Team Yankee.
Tools and items needed:
- Coconut Coir door mat - in Australia you can get them at Bunnings. Costs $5 for plenty of fields!
- Hobby knife / box cutter
- Home made brown wash
- BMP Company box from Battlefront
So for the BMP-1 hulls, if you don’t have any it’s highly likely there are BMP-1 leftover on thousands of sprues (You will need the hull, bottom of the turret, top of the turret and the the 2A28 Grom gun)
Anyway, let’s get into it:
15mm Fields Method
- Get your coconut husk doormat
- Get your knife and cut the mat into fields. You will only need 1 of these now
- Now have a look at a 15mm scale BMP or IFV - measure the distance between the tracks
- Cut away some tracks to represent the wheat/crop field that’s been compressed by 13.2 tonnes of Kurganskiy Mashinostroitelyniy Zavod steel. Hold the knife at a 45-degree angle, so you can cut the coconut husk!
- Once you’re happy with the trail, mix some cheap brown paint with water and give it a nice coat so you can see the tracks - contrast helps.
- Now get your hands on the BMP-1 hull, assemble the other leftover parts, paint it up and place it on the mat. I painted one simply after using a grey primer and then tried out dirty down rust.
I intend to paint up a few more leftover hulls and submerge them in some cornice cement or Modge Podge, on an MDF base. I might paint two less weathered, to represent recently destroyed vehicles, but the rest will be as rusty as can be.
If you play 15mm sci-fi games such as Gruntz, or Ma.K you can use this idea to represent ancient artifacts. I’m also really excited to continue working on the 15mm terrain range - I really like the smaller scales, and I can’t wait to start Zona Alfa in 15mm. I have a bunch of soviet infantry leftover that I’ll base individually, and I also bought some 15mm sci-fi infantry from Slave 2 Gaming.
You can see the pictures of the 15mm ruins and some unreleased roads and bridges. I don’t think I’ll use a jigsaw system for the roads because A) jigsaws look very ugly B) if you accidentally bump the road during gameplay, you won’t risk knocking the whole road system and breaking something.
Epic Scale Terrain Survey - what 6-15mm terrain do you want to see available next?
Please let me know what terrain you want to see next in the Epic Scale Terrain survey! For your help and time I'm offering $15-25 voucher codes (They will be emailed to you) More details are in the Google Forms link.
I want to make sure I'm making terrain the people (ie, you) actually want for your tabletops!
