And the lava's red glare

Terrain is important if not critical when playing miniature wargames.  It breaks up charge lanes, provides cover, and just makes the game more interesting.  And it is even better if the terrain also looks good.

THMiniatures is a Canadian company (founded by Golden Daemon and Slayer Sword winner Thierry Husser) that is creating some really cool resin terrain pieces.  I backed their first kickstarter (I talked about it here and here) and was excited when the second one came around.

I picked up an early bird pledge which meant early shipping - and got in my new volcanic terrain in the middle of August.  Both their kickstarters had specific themed pieces, and both had a big centerpiece.  For the first one, it was the Pit+Grave

Painted and ready for the tabletop.  Note the top of the pit (with the sarcophagus) comes off revealing the spikes and skulls below it.

The second time, they did the Dark Altar + Grave - an altar set in the center of a volcano.  

I thought this would make a good piece to base an entire game table around - all of the terrain being volcanic. Rather than make additional rules the various pieces would just count as other types.

Of course with all the Deadzone, Dreadball, Dungeon Saga and Kings of War miniatures I have to paint - I decide to get these done up quickly instead.

So the dark altar is simply blocking terrain.  It is a nice piece of resin terrain - and like the pit+grave has the option to cover the center (with the grave) or leave it as an open pit.

clean resin

in living color

I have to comment here that it just amazes me how the exact same piece of backing paper (with kind of a slight felt like surface takes on different colors based on what is on it.  In the bare resin pictures, it looks much darker than it is.  The truer color is with the painted terrain.  I don't know if it is the camera adjusting for the white or what happens, but I do find it interesting.

with the altar

and painted

I also picked up a dark statue base - a two part piece of additional blocking terrain.  I glued it together after taking the picture, so the painted version doesn't quite match 1-1.

in two parts

and one piece painted

As with most kickstarter, there were stretch goals.  As part of these, I got these pieces ( volcanic stones, small crater, small puddle of lava, 2 wooden defenses, carved stela and stalag-mini ) for free. With a base this could be a nice area of difficult terrain (since small pieces of 'scatter' terrain don't work well for mass battle games (as opposed to skirmish games)

lots of scatter terrain

and now painted

I picked up two small volcanic rifts to use as obstacles

small volcanic rifts

looking hot

I remembered a couple of tables at Nashcon that used stalagmites as woods - so I thought I could put them on the lava lake and puddle of lava

Lava Lake

bubbling with joy

Puddle of Lava (I need to start putting in a mini to show perspective - this is about 1/3 the size of the lake)

ok, I'm running out of puns now

2 sets of 5 stalagmites

sometimes a stalagmite is just a stalagmite

These would be difficult terrain height 4 (the equivalent of forests)

Lake & puddle with stalagmites

and set up as 'woods' - or their equivalent

When I do my table set ups, I also like to include some hills - and this didn't provide anything that I felt was usable for that.  However making some 'volcanic' themed hills should be fairly easy - I've been cutting up some old volcanic based scenery - so I should be able to cut out a couple more hills out of it, put sand on the sides and paint them to match the terrain.  (ok, I haven't made those yet)

Now to make a new 'volcanic' table cover (i.e. black felt) - and I'll have a 13th table for events.

Because it is all fun and games . . .