Creating a Historical Battlefield on a Budget part 1

Since getting into Bolt Action recently, I noticed the terrain collection and boards at Iron Forest where not quite cutting the grade. Until now we only had to cater for mainly Sci-fi and the odd bit of fantasy here and there. But that feel of the French country side, with fields and hedgerows and cobblestone towns - we literally had nothing to capture this!

So a new terrain collection was in order, My biggest hurdles would be time and money. Time as in I had a few new people coming down the club, all planning on playing Bolt Action so only had a one week window to make the initial gaming surface and money due to have two birthdays and valentines day to consider.

After soaking up as much as I could on the internet of other peoples budget endeavours - I came to conclusion I wanted to have my first attempt at a "fur" gaming matt. Had always been impressed with the Carnage and Glory demo games I had seen in Wargames Illustrated and plucked up the will to give it a go myself.

After a trip to my local fabric shop (which is thankfully only a thirty minute walk) I came back with more than enough fur for my 8ft by 4xt gaming table for well under £40, I wanted a bit more so I could create hills and such for elevation by chucking things under the fur. 

Now I read a lot of tutorials about clipping the fur but the stuff I bought, when back combed only stood up at 10mm, perfect - time saved! 

So with a tin of Fieldgrey War Spray from plastic soldier company (only thing I had to hand) I began giving the fur a very liberal coat of spray paint.

I sprayed the fur in roughly two foot squared sections, so that before the spray could dry I could back comb it (brushing against the grain of the fur) with a normal DIY brush, this made the fur stand on end and clump in bush kind of fashion.

I continued in this fashion till all the mat was well greened up. You could leave patches the normal colour to represent meadows but I wanted some uniform for modular sake. 

Once covered I gave the fur a very heavy coat of Hairspray to stop the paint wearing off on gamers hands and models, this is the same brand I use for sealing my models, have had nothing but good results and is very cheap and can be found in most bargain stores.

And there you have it, a 8x4 feet game-able matt for under £50, made in under 30 minutes. I am by no means finished with this as I believe I still have a lot more techniques to learn to improve it but the beauty of it as it stands at the moment is that I can go back to it and improve at any time.

Here are some shots of it with some scenery...

In the flesh the mats blend together really well - think the lighting of the spray booth behind me had something to do with this.

The roads where made from £2 worth of adhesive floor tiles I managed to pick up from a pound shop. Just cut them into shape and used sticky tape on the underside to hold them together. 

If anyone who has also undertaken in making a fur mat, please feel free to share any tips and techniques to help me improve this - I am very VERY much a novice in this :)

Thanks for your time, cya soon ;)