Lawrence of (Heroscape) Arabia

My lord, I think...I think your book is right. The desert is an ocean in which no oar is dipped and on this ocean the Bedu go where they please and strike where they please. This is the way the Bedu have always fought. You're famed throughout the world for fighting in this way and this is the way you should fight now! 

I have spent a couple of days considering the thorny subject of terrain for use with my Heroscape set up. If you recall my sole source of terrain at present consists of a large number of Town in a Bag Buildings and N gauge trees; together with a pile of Greek ceramic souvenir buildings. For use with Hexon these are absolutely fine and look bang on when used with the block armies. Unfortunately, a lot of the collection is too large for use with the smaller Heroscape tiles. This presented me with a dilemma and a difficult decision. I really did not want to have terrain in two scales but now see this as being inevitable as one of my standard blocks takes up rather a lot of a standard Heroscape tile.

My first thought was to look at 2mm terrain but despite being very nice (and certainly extensive in terms of coverage) it is in fact too small for what I want - the blocks tower over the buildings and woods etc. My thoughts are leaning towards using 1/300th terrain as the footprint of the models I shall be using is smaller. For example, trees could be based on 1p pieces which would enable me to use a couple per hex without impeding the block too much. Similarly, by using small versions of buildings (I am even considering painted Monopoly houses and hotels for this) I can deploy within the house without too much hassle.

My first port of call in this respect will probably be Heroics and Ros as I know their trees of old and they are pretty reasonably priced to boot. Unsurprisingly I will also be raiding Irregular Miniatures as they have a very nice range of Middle Eastern buildings and some Palm trees.

Once my set of Heroscape tiles that is going to be used for my desert games arrives I will of course post the progress on the blog - especially as the siren lure of the Arab Revolt is becoming more and more insistent. The fact that Lawrence of Arabia has just come out on Blue Ray AND it is on my birthday list for next week is of course, entirely coincidental....;-)

The dreamers of the day are dangerous men....