Terrain Projects: basing

The most important skill for making terrain is having a good eye for finding stuff to use. But the most important part of your actual terran making is selecting a good base. The base is very important to the playability, but most importantly it is the main determiner of durability.

Without a good foundation the terrain project is not going to be durable for play, storage, and transport. On Metal or Resin terrain pieces you might get away with not having a base, but for everything else it is just about essential.

Here is a video which shows off some wood based terrain and the natural rocks and things it can support. In general (but not always, varies on type) wood is sturdy at thinner proportions than foam and gives support to heavier structures but it isn't as sculptable.



All good bases I've worked from have either been metal, wood, or foam. Avoid the temptation to use plasticard or cardboard. They're sturdy but they also warp too easily. Good metal bases are hard to come by unless you have friends in a metal shop as they can often get you scrap material that is perfect for it. If you're not a professional metalworker, stay away from making your own!

That leaves Wood and various types of foam. There are a lot of ups and downs to both and even more when the varieties of wood and foam are taken into account. My preference is for wood because I have more of the tools to work with wood and I like to avoid the toxic gasses that are produced when heating foam. This is really a preference thing and the majority of tabletop I know of is made from foam.

This plus some good air circulation is what you need for scupting foam properly:

Let me stress it again, don't work with heated foam in a closed off room. It isn't good for you or anyone else who has to breath vaporized foam.

Aside: Here is the second part in case you want the link

If you don't have the tools and the materials already for more advanced foam or wood work then you're mostly going to be buying flats. You can go to a home supply store (i.e. Home Depot) and buy large boards of foamboard (foam with plastic on the sides) or your local craft store (i.e. Michael's) is likely to have a good selection of wood flats (mostly Balsa wood, but also some others). A good hobby knife or box cutter is usually enough for these to get the correctly proportioned base you want and need.



As a general rule of thumb when putting things on your base start with the largest things first. Doesn't matter if you're building ruins, basing figures, or wilderness scenes. Full buildings and fortresses, then trees and boulders, then smaller plants and rubble, etc. It is easiest to work form largest detail to smallest.



P.S. Here is a series of 5 youtube videos on making a set of foam hills by Blue Table Painting.