Hobby Basics: Rivers

Many a historical battle has been influenced by rivers, whether securing a flank, circumscribing movement, or hindering the chance of safe retreat. They definitely have a place on a gaming battlefield, and back around April 2020, I set out to see what I could manage! 

You can of course just buy terrain if you want (the various Flames of War boxes do look pretty good, and reasonably priced), or maybe 3D print some, but if you're cheap, feeling creative, or a combination of the two, wargaming rivers are easy enough to do up on your own.

The pikemen attempt a crossing in the worst possible way.... maybe someone dropped something upstream?

Good terrain should be durable. While I think cardstock or thin cardboard could potentially work as a base, I've picked up a pair of PVC squares last summer, and have been using it for bases for my recent terrain bases. I've just been using a hobby knife and occasional saw to hack it into the shapes I needed. The PVC may be a bit overkill, but it's sturdy and working well.

For the river, I used a full 12" by 12" sheet, plus some 3" square scraps from the other sheet for the corners. I am least happy with the corners, but more on that at the end. While narrow rivers aren't necessarily safe, eyeballing it, approximately 3" wide terrain pieces and 2" wide rivers looked like reasonable but surmountable obstacles for Kings of War units.

Sketching helps plan stuff out, and line things up. 

I wanted the joining edges as flush as possible, so I used careful knife work to start, and a longer hobby saw for a more uniform cut. The edges on the banks I wasn't concerned with, so I roughly cut them with a hobby knife, and then carved out more interesting edges. Rivers don't flow in a straight line after all!

WIP with paste. In the top right, I added some pink insulation rocks, to create a section that would be impassable. I liked that 

Speaking of.... rivers DO flow, which creates a bit of a dilemma for this terrain. I didn't want to have easily identifiable directional flow like v's or eddies (if you do want that, check out this site here for some visuals). So I opted not to include rocks in the middle, for example, and paint up everything lazily, with cartoony current lines, so that I could orient the pieces in either direction.

The banks are Vallejo Rough Grey Pumice, painted gray as I wanted a kind of mountainous river look. I don't know why, I don't really have any mountainous basing or rugged 

The river's paint job is nothing too special. I did a base coat of GW's Temple Guard Blue, then a metallic teal from Deco Art to give it a glisten, and then current lines with some random blue paints. The intent was to try and show the speed without bringing eddies into the mix.

The finished result.

So, did it work?  Well, it's on the table, so yes, it counts! Are their ways to improve? Oh, for sure! Were I to do this again, the following things would be on my mind:

• The PVC squares/sheets worked well as a base. It took a little extra work to get the straight cuts (when not on the edge of the sheet, har har), but the effort seems worth it. They seem pretty durable, and should last a while.
• The basing paste worked too. Those various pastes have continually been pretty slick. 
• Cutting the bends from one piece helps get everything lined up too. This allows the river to line up with a table edge. This is not of paramount importance, but you don't want things hanging off table edges if you can help it.
• BIGGER IS BETTER. I think the pieces would look better a little wider, and would want to play around with some wider sections. I think slightly wider banks would also look good, and maybe going muddier rather than rockier would look good too.
• MORE IS BETTER. You want more pieces than you'd think. This amount can bisect a standard KoW table, but barely, and only on the short end. With a good bend, I can carve out one corner of the table... which isn't really fair. I'd probably want at least 50% more pieces than I have currently, to give more terrain options in a game.
• LONGER IS BETTER, at least for the bends. The tiny corners do not look great, to put it mildly. I think they have a place, but overall, longer and more curvy river sections should look better on the table, and I will not be making any more tiny bends.

Overall, this worked well though, and I learned a lot. Another sheet's worth of work and I should have a very passable, lengthy, and most importantly bendy river for the table!