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Woodland Scenics, a company that has been around for a long time selling miniature scenery to model railroaders, is trying to get into the miniature wargaming scene with its new c. I have long been a fan of Woodland Scenics, being a big fan of model trains myself (as I’ve talked about here on The Wargame Explorer). So I was excited to get a sample box of All Game Terrain and get a chance to play with it.

Do I Like It? Yes, very much. Will the average wargamer like it? I’m not as sure. Let’s take a closer look.

First off, what did I get in the starter box? It came with a paint, which didn’t seem to be anything other than regular acrylic paint, and wasn’t mentioned in the How-To Guide. I also got three bags of grass and ground cover. I got a bag of gravel (with a little greenery mixed in), and I got a packet of boulders and a packet of EZ Bushes (lichen).

Now I’ll note right up front that all of this stuff is cool, but this isn’t the stuff that excites me most about All Game Terrain. That would be other products such as other colors of sand and gravel, the stones, the extended range of boulders, the flowers, the brambles, the tall grass, and the deadfall.

I really think that, if you had the entire range of All Game Terrain stuff you could really make some truly tremendous bases.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk about how All Game Terrain works.

How Does All Game Terrain Work?

I tested out two bases, both using little diorama-style odd-shaped bases that were included in the starter set. My first step was to paint them both with the brown paint. I don’t know if this was a requirement–do you need to prime bases?–but I dutifully did it anyway.

When the paint had dried, I spread the bases with glue. There are two kinds of tacky glue, and I’m not 100% clear on what the difference is between the two of them. The first is called Magic-Tac, which they say is used for keeping Tall Grass and Static Grass in place, as well as positioning tufts. The second is Game-Tac, which is for Deadfall, Stones, and “other landscaping materials”. Not sure which one to use, but fairly well-versed in Woodland Scenics stuff, I used Game-Tac to paint each base.

Then I started to sprinkle the various landscaping materials onto the glue: the Base Layer, the Grass, and the Weeds onto one base, and the gravel onto the other base. Then I realized that I’d forgotten to put down a boulder and quickly brushed some stuff out of the way and glued a boulder down onto the first.

I played with the different materials, sprinkling a little gravel onto the first base, a little grass onto the gravel base, messing with each one until they looked just the way that I wanted them to look.

And then it was time to seal them, which is where Super Seal comes in. Now, I know Super Seal from model railroading, and (for some reason) the starter set even came with a spray bottle to spray Super Seal on the bases. But, because I didn’t want to make a mess everywhere I used a pipette to drizzle Super Seal over all of the base, soaking it completely. I left it overnight to dry and–ta da!–they are hard as a rock and look great.

At that point I glued some of the lichen in place on the gravel base, and then glued the models onto each base.

All Game Terrain: The Pros and Cons

Pros:

• They really look great, and will look even better when I have access to all of the various colors and materials. I have always liked Woodland Scenics, and this is truly some great stuff. (To be fair, I already HAVE most of the other colors of this stuff in my railroading workshop, but I was limiting myself to the starter set for this.)
• It is a more naturalistic look to bases than you typically get with standard base products. A textured base that’s been drybrushed and then has a grass tuft attached doesn’t come close to the naturalism that you find on these bases.
• I love Super Seal, because you can get a very fluffy, grassy look but it is all hard as a rock.
• The boulder looks great.

Cons:

• If you’re used to the standard basing (texture, drybrush, grass tuft) then this will seem like an AWFULLY LONG PROCESS. You’ve got to leave the Super Seal overnight to get it to set.
• Why in the world they thought that mini wargamers would want a spray bottle for applying glue to their bases I don’t know. A pipette gives you so much more control and also less mess.
• This is a messy process. You’ve got to picture this as seasoning food: you take a pinch of gravel and sprinkle it on a base, a pinch of grass, a pinch of weeds. So you’ve got little piles of powder everywhere. (I did all of this inside the lid of a cardboard storage box so it wouldn’t get everywhere.) And in the starter set there’s not a great way to do this. The packets of materials are sealed bags and at the very least they should have been resealable. There’s no great way to store this stuff in the way it’s presented. The materials guide that came with the starter shows that they sell shakers, which would help, but I don’t know.
• The Gravel is one of my favorite products in the starter set, but it’s very reminiscent of Geek Gaming Scenics stuff, and Geek Gaming Scenics seems to have a much bigger variety of choices.

The Big Con:

Like I said, I do model railroading. And I’ve seen all of these products before, because, aside from maybe the Boulders, there’s nothing in this starter set that isn’t already in the Woodland Scenics product line. Now, I don’t know the price point of these products, but if you look at these shakers from my Woodland Scenics model railroading line (these are about seven-eight inches high) these jugs of turf and grass cost about $18. And these contain approximately twenty times the amount of material that’s in an All Game Terrain bag.

Does this mean that All Game Terrain is going to be overpriced? I don’t know. It means that if you’re going to be using A LOT of All Game Terrain products you might as well buy the big stuff from the train lines.

The Bottom Line

All of that said, I really like this stuff. I’m not totally sold on it yet because I’m so set in my ways when it comes to basing. BUT: I like it enough that I’ve decided I’m going to exclusively use it for my new Black Templar army, to see if I really like it. I WILL be including other colors and materials from the railroad stuff to supplement it, though, but I’ll also be keeping my eye out for more All Game Terrain products.