Goatboy here with another look into Warhammer’s past. Today I want to talk about the awesome old-school terrain we used to battle on, way back when everyone had to make their own!
Goatboy here with another look into the past. Today I want to talk about the old terrain we used to battle on. Today a giant set of companies including GW make gorgeous terrain kits to glam up our tabletops. But go back a few editions and every hobbyist was constantly on the lookout at every hardware store, pet store, and holiday clearance sale for anything we could put on our tabletops.
These pieces would live and breathe on a felt carpet of lost dreams. We would do battle in more than just ruins and L shaped MDF buildings. So sit back and listen to an old grognard waxing poetically about how old battles were fought in grand forests and snowy Christmas trees.
Happy Little Trees
When was the last time you saw a tree on the tabletop? I am not talking about the Age of Sigmar tables where armies can bring their own pile of creepy trees – no instead these trees were the foundation of a terrain set. They normally came from Hobby Lobby, Michaels, or model train hobby stores and were bought in bulk after Christmas. They normally had some fake snow on them, got glued onto some kind of MDF shape, and pretended to be grim dark.
I remember an old table from back in the Da Boyz tournament days that had so many trees on it that you couldn’t fit your model anywhere. It felt like you were battling on a snow planet and hoping the damage you were bringing to your opponents army wasn’t going to get you on the naughty list. These trees initially started out nice but as they were made with twisted metal, fake plastic foliage, and some paint they did not last long. Your only hope was they survived the year and you could back again to the big box art store and grab another pile of Xmas trees on clearance.
Rivers and Water Features
Oh do you remember when the old Chimera had the Amphibious keyword? I do and when you got a chance to play on a table with rivers and didn’t have to roll the dangerous terrain check you cheered for bringing one of these old tanks. I knew some stores had the old Galeforce night pre painted rivers and how you could create a nicely themed table with bridges covering the rivers and create crazy battles.
I used to be amphibious!
Your poor minis would have to roll a d6 just to see how far they moved thru the water and you would have games where your poor guys took 3 turns to get to the other side. When events were going pretty heavily I remember making some basic rivers to try and bring some new life to the table tops. I think if you told any player now they could only be moving an inch during their phase the event would have a mutiny.
Castle Walls AKA, the Mighty Fortress
How many people remember how stores who participated with GW and running events had a crap ton of castle walls? I think every store got sent a few boxes of hte classic GW Mighty Fortress, and my local shop at the time had a few. You could build a nice square looking castle that would also double as a nice wall to hide your T’au behind as they jumped, shot, and jumped back.
These walls that actually blocked line of sight were the first iterations of the famous L’s we live with now. They easily covered an area and provided the ability to hide and plan while we rushed to the center to beat each other up. I wonder where our old walls are living at now? They were built out of strong injected plastic built upon the blood and toil of miniature games before it.
The Bastion!!!
Who remembers the good ole Bastion kit that came out in Planetstrike way back in 2009? How many times have we praised “Bastion Jesus” to protect our daemons from an armies alpha strike as having actual blocking terrain wasn’t ext to impossible? I sit here in my office and can see the one I used to use up on a shelf. I added a bunch of gross little eyes on it to make it more chaotic.
This kit was a building piece for lots of fun terrain projects thru the years as GW just printed out a ton of them and handed them out to events like candy. I remember those games where you could put guys inside. Then having your giant daemon prince run up, shake the crap out of it, and watch as all the guys inside poured out like a gross thick stew.
Honorable Mention – Foam Balls & Toothpick Xenos Cactus
Going back to the early days of Rogue Trader, and early Adepticons, we all used to love a good brightly colored set of Foam Balls and Toothpick Terrain. Watch out for getting your wooly sweater caught on it!
What other old terrain features are we missing from the old editions? In some ways I missed vehicles creating craters and broken terrain. There is something sad about watching your giant tank blow up and all that is left is some broken walls living on a neoprene mat.
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Thomas Reidy, aka Goatboy, the ever-evil member of BoLS. I do arts, play 40k, and even paint a lot of stuff. I have been playing Warhammer 40K since the 1990s, and have won multiple national events including Adepticon and GW GTs. I’ve been writing for BoLS for 15 years. Look at my Instagram to see what I am working on – or working on for someone. I am always doing something hobby related.
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