Community Awareness - Caring for Club Terrain

 

It seems that everywhere I look on the online community I'm treated to views such as the ones above.  Spectacular tables that are filled with mind-blowing terrain that is well built and painted to a spectacular degree.  Let's be honest here, if you're reading this article, you're most likely looking at the pics above, wishing your local club had terrain so damn good and I don't blame you one iota (if you're local club HAS this terrain, you're a lucky bastard and I'm very jealous right now...).  I mean, look at them! Each table is filled with mesmerizing details that allow you to immerse yourself in a world of your own imaginings.  Players become gods among men, striding the battlefield while putting their foes to the sword.  And yet when we go to our local club for a game, this is what we find...

Can you see the Marines?

This is our reality.  Dull, unpainted, basic terrain whose greatest achievement would be allowing players imaginings to be played out in vintage black and white.  Why must we be subjected to games with unpainted and crappy terrain?  Why can't we have something nice too?

The simple answer is: You don't deserve it

Countless are the times I've opened boxes of club terrain only to find some new piece that's been damaged by careless gamers or have been dented and warped after being thrown haphazardly into a random box.  Last Sunday saw the greatest example of this I've ever seen.

As you can see here, some careless gamers has thrown another gamer's personal terrain into its box without thinking about storage pressure and the power of gravity. As a result, part of the ruin has actually sunk into the pond and become stuck.  The subsequent removal of said ruin resulted in the creation of puncture marks marring the relatively smooth surface of the water feature that this gamer worked so hard to achieve.  This raises the question: How can a club trust players to care for their own terrain if the players themselves cannot respect the terrain created by their peers!?!?!?!?!?  Personally I don't think its too much to ask that you treat all terrain with respect, especially since you didn't have to pay for it in the first place.  THIS IS THE REASON WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS!!!!!!

I guess the point of this article is to get you to think about the terrain at your game club and how you treat it before, after and during your games.  We all want great looking terrain to put on out own tables, but first we need to prove that we can look after the terrain we already have.  Just because we don't own something, doesn't mean we can treat it like garbage.  Quite the opposite actually, it means that we need to treat it all the more carefully.  If we don't, then we might not have any terrain at all...

Catch you all later

Trev