Over the Christmas and New Year holiday of 2021, I took on a project: to return to my (temporarily) shelved 15mm pike & shot / Renaissance era rules… and the pile of terrain waiting to be finished for it.
I’d end up building and basing a few buildings, some elevation pieces, modular roads, rivers, and applying the finishing flock and foliage to all of it. It was a few weeks of regular weeknight work.
Here are some photos.
15mm Buildings
Here are some WIP snapshots of some of the terrain.
There was so much terrain to work through that eventually I setup the folding table in my office to give me extra space to arrange everything:
Hillside Paths and Elevation Changes
My 15XX rules use a large zone-based grid system that I’m aligning my 15mm terrain to. I’d already build a “clockwise” 2x1sq hillside road and a smaller 1x1sq ramp, but wanted a “counterclockwise” 2×1 version to increase my layout flexibility.
While I was at it, I figured I might as well make another 1×1.
- Based on extruded PVC (like all my 15mm terrain) and build up with cardboard and hot glue.
- Covered with a mix of grout and/or PVA glue and aquarium sand.
- Then painted and finished.
Eventually I ended up with this:
Cliffs, Flat Hills, Big Blocks of Elevation
The use of the grid system extends to elevation changes.
When I first started designing these rules, I went with a 3x2ft board, but playtesting showed that the game played just as well on a smaller 2x2ft space. I chopped up my painted, caulked, and glued terrain board and kept the remainders.
I turned them into more hills. Everybody loves hills.
It All Comes Together
It took a fair bit of time, the buildings, the elevation pieces, and the modular road and river terrain (in a later post) gives me lots of options to work with… if I could ever find someone to play and test the rules with.
Ah, the bane of an indie wargamer designing rules in a niche era or genre!
For now, everything’s gone back in the tubs, but at least I don’t have the specter of “you should get this done” lingering in the back of my mind!
