The Portable Battlefield – A return to necessities

As I do not currently own a motor vehicle, use public transport to commute, attend Corsairs meetings and will likely continue to do so for the next couple of years, the one major restriction on my gaming is setting up a tabletop terrain that caters to my aesthetic sensibilities  and still be able to transport it to and from the gaming venue without risking a hernia.

I once developed a quick list of what a portable setup might entail on this blog several years ago, but nothing surpasses theory so much as the exigencies of reality.

Convenience has triumphed over economy and in turn value over aesthetic ideals. I’ve obtained one the cloth backed GW battlemats, which I find suits my needs for the meantime. it’s wellmade, durable, and lightweight and generally very good value for money. With free time being a distinct limitation, the idea of making a whole bunch of portable terrain took a deserved back seat. The addition of some ready made lightweight hills (GW funnily enough) and a good number of Noch deciduous trees to begin with gives me a good starting point to work from.

If I make a few judicious purchases and add a couple of commercial pieces I should be able to bring a decent terrain set up to the club by rail and not feel like i’m playing on a billiard table or a cricket pitch. If anything it’s trees and particularly buildings that will take the most space and effort to take along, so initially I’ll be playing in rural wildernesses bereft of habitation, as long as there are sufficient amounts of broken and LoS blocking/obscuring terrain.

In 15mm, it’ll be easy to add a few scratchbuilt structure from foamcore and the like, and most of the other scale specific terrain will easily fit within acceptable load limits. 120 or so trees should allow me to have enough cover on the table and break it up nicely in concert with a few hills and maybe the occasional cropfield (coir mats FTW) anmd flexible roads/river networks.

I’ve seen exquisite portable 15mm terrain carried around in old Kodak photopaper boxes to know it can be done and that I could fill the average 6′ by 4′ tabletop with enough hedges, fences and walls to look good. So all in all I feel pretty confident about being able to take along the army du jour and enough terrain to at least get a passable rating in terms of cover and aesthetics.

Pete