Terrain Basics – A Desert Table

As mentioned in the recap, I got my hands on some Gale Force 9 - Battlefield in a Box badlands scenery. I saw them at Frontline Games on Tactica, but I ordered them after the show, so I would have less to carry.

The Battlefield in a Box items come prepainted and are quite sturdy, so a perfect base to build a table around / upon. They are produced by Gale Force 9 (who got bought by Battlefront - the company behind Flames of War - a while back) and a distributed from New Zealand, but availability has improved a lot.

I went for the two large and two smaller sets, as they remind me a lot of the old stacked rock formations from the mid-90s in the White Dwarf battle reports. And even if they are sold as 25-35mm, they are compatible with a lot of different settings. The badlands range is available in sand-yellow and mars-red.

The larger sets cover a single piece each with a proper foot print and give you a solid line of sight blocker along with height for units. Badlands Bluff and Badlands Plateau are both 35 USD (sold for around 30 EUR).

The smaller sets, Badlands Tor and Badlands Pillars are both 25 USD (sold for around 20 EUR), and add some further sight blocker and cover on infantry level as well as scatter terrain.

The whole set cost me 100 bucks and works for me in multiple scenarios. Adeptus Titanicus, desert warfare of world war 2 and other settings that I would place on a desert ground, like Gaslands.

But I need a underground to place them on, so I need a mat or cloth of some kind. I looked into gaming mats made from mousepad material, but didn't feel like paying 80 EUR for a 6 by 4 ft mat, especially for something rather "basic" like a desert.

I had painter fleece cut to size a while back, 6 by 4 ft / 1,8 by 1,2 m, as the cloth is usually sold only a meter broad (but you can get a 2m wide 25m long roll for about 80 EUR, which gives you enough coverage for a tournament worth). It has foil on its back and mixed textile scraps etc. bond together to catch dripping paint.

You can go for the acryl gaming mats, adding flock, sand etc., but I wanted something simple. I used spray cans to overcoat the grey-blue colour of the painter fleece, in my case Uniform Brown and German Dunkelgelb by Bolt Action (from my understanding those are re-labelled Army Painter rattle cans and were discontinued). Starting with the brown for a broad undercoat and then added some alteration with Dunkelgelb.

After letting it air out and dry, I went for a test run with the badland terrain pieces. Quite happy with how they worked out.

And it is already pretty close to the bases of my Legio Astraman and the badlands terrain, but I'll give it a drybrush with a brownish-yellow for some further highlights and maybe some partial depth with some thinned down darker brown.

As I have the classic Citadel grass mat, sci-fi, deep sea and space battles, a desert mat now and only need a snowy one for the rest.