Cabinette Wars

Terrain Tiles for the Breaking of the Fellowship 

I've been running a game based on the Breaking of the Fellowship scenario that takes place at the end of first part the Tolkien Trilogy.  Intending to run this at my local wargaming club I thought it needed to be tarted up a bit as the while my green cloth marked out in biro was functional it wasn't that pretty.

Having some spare vinyl flooring in the loft I used this and some railway modelling grass sheet to make a 5x5 grid of 9x9" squares for the game as shown below.

The idea of using vinyl flooring was to avoid warping, however as it was on a roll cutting it square so that the tiles would butt up properly was a real pain but I persevered and finally achieved an acceptable level of precision(?).  Then muggins went and glued the grass sheet down with pva, which being water based promptly caused the paper backed grass sheet to ruck up and then shrink as it dried making all the tiles curl up!  Much swearing and bending of the tiles ensued until they laid flat, albeit with lots repairs required for the resulting tears in the grass sheet.  Not great, but it'll have to do.

As the action takes place in the woods, trees are placed at the corners of each tile.  The numbers, made from children's magnetic fridge numbers, allow players to rapidly identify where they are.  This is needed as the hidden movement system means that figures leaving one tile don't necessarily appear in the adjacent tile.  I will post again on this topic explaining how this system works once I find an old article I wrote on this.  

Also shown, as can be seen more clearly in the next photo, is the dice used for random movement by unaccompanied Hobbits and the 'enemy' when they cannot see any Fellowship figures. 

The players, as the non-Hobbit fellowship characters have to find the Hobbits before the enemy does and get them to safety using boats.  The boats, shown below, are visible in the far corner of the grid in the first photo.