Trench Crusade Terrain
Just as a real battlefield would have terrain features such as buildings, hills and forests, the battlefield for a game of Trench Crusade will need its own terrain features to provide cover for the warriors in your Warband. The terrain you place on the battlefield is made up of individual models that are called terrain pieces.
The Battlefield
The area on which you play your game is referred to as the Battlefield. Before you can set up the terrain for your game, you will need a Battlefield to place it on. Most games of Trench Crusade can be played on a dining table, but some require an area that is 36" or 48" square. If you are going to play one of these larger scenarios, you may need to make a special gaming board. For all of the other scenarios, a standard dining table will provide more than enough space for your game.
Terrain Pieces
In addition to the battlefield you will need as many terrain pieces as you can lay your hands on. You can purchase plastic terrain models suitable for use as terrain pieces in much the same way as you can the models that make up the warriors in your Warband. We would recommend you use the models from the growing range of Trench Crusade terrain for your games, but we won’t mind if you decide to use another company’s kits instead of our own. Many players enjoy scratch-building the terrain pieces for their games from modelling materials like plasticard, foam board and foam card, PVA glue and modelling sand. Suffice to say that a quick search on the internet will bring up plenty of examples of terrain models that you can use, and introductory articles about how to scratch-build terrain.
Don’t worry if you are new to tabletop wargaming and have not yet had a chance to build up a large collection of terrain. Just use any terrain pieces you have available, and/or supplement them with household items that can stand-in for actual terrain pieces. For example, you could use books to represent low hills, pens to represent walls, rocks collected from your garden or a park as boulders, twigs to represent fallen trees and so on. Placing a thick blanket over some books will create a rolling landscape with hills and gullies to fight over.
The important thing to appreciate is that it is absolutely okay to use whatever you have to hand in order to play a game of Trench Crusade; after all, the Lord took six days to create everything, so don’t worry if it takes a little time to create your ideal battlefield! Don’t worry, very soon your collection of terrain pieces will grow and you will be able to return your books to their shelves and your rocks and twigs to the garden (though you may well find yourself looking back very fondly on those early games and the improvised terrain that you used in order to play them).