Simple Terrain Tiles

 One of the things I've been trying to solve about making a small portable miniature-less version of OHW is the issue of terrain. Having flocked hills with simple wooden unit indicators seems a bit weird to me and defeats the purpose of trying to keep the whole thing simple, cheap and low effort. 

So, what to do?

One thought is to pre-print workable birds eye views of maps like these images pulled from google.

While these would probably look nice on the 12 inch MDF board, and as decoration, it wouldn't solve issues where one game I would like a hill in the north, but for another scenario require an open field there. 

One solution that originally occurred to me was using cute up bases, like the ones that you may have seen in the first post being used as hills. Renedra (or similar brand) square cavalry bases, the kind you typically end up placing two horses side by side on (that I had spare from an old and unfinished Saga project I may one day return to). However this requires buying a bunch of bases, and then painting them and varying them etc. Which, while fine, is increasing the space used in the small dominos box I'm using and making the component count a bit fancier than needed.

However upon some talking it over with my opponent from that game the other day, he clocked me on to the idea of using 2" x 2" squares of blank post card, and continuing to draw the terrain aspects on. I really rather like this idea. No carving at bases, and much easier to double side them for say, a Small Hill on one side, and one half of a Medium Hill on the other.  It would also keep the board from getting too "vertical" so to speak, and of course I'd get to sit and colour in with coloured pencils. A win for any Big Kid really !

 

So I did some mock ups on post it notes to help get an idea for quantity, and using some blank postcard started playing around with styles and designs. I'm of frankly limited artistic juices, even for drawing some hills.  But I feel like the simple designs could work (I will of course settle on one to use and keep it uniform). 

At current count, I believe I'll be looking at something in the range of 16 terrain tiles consisting of four each of Hills, Forest, Lake/Marshlands and Towns (with the hills and forests etc reversible possibly, either with another terrain element or by way of making a single larger hill into quarters for instance.)

As well as around 6 tiles of 4" x 2" Road/ River section. These will also likely be double sided, more than one river on a 12" square board would be excessive, and reverse sides will include Fords and Bridges.

Elegant? Probably not. But it works (hopefully).