Countryside Infinity Terrain Guide: How to get your map together

After reading all the different points and thoughts about terrain in Infinity, you are hopefully eager to build your own terrain. In this last part of the guide, I want to give some different ways to get your map together a closer look. Since the cineastic and strategic experience of Infinity is strongly related to the terrain you use and it can impact the game in many different ways, as we discussed before, it is important to get the right terrain pieces to hand for your game. With the introduction of 3D-printing, lasercutting and a bigger community, the market of terrain in general and pieces designed for Infinity has grown a lot over the past years. But besides this, there are many opportunities to let your own creativity and hands flow and build things on your own. While I am not a great terrain-builder and especially painter on my own, I want to focus more on the general aspects of different kinds of terrain, like what do you have to take into account when using it and for whom it would be good to use.

A general wrap-up

Before we discuss different options to get your map together, we should recapitulate, what we need. Since line of sight is an important thing in Infinity and everything dies instantly if it is seen from too many positions, you will need solid terrain to block firelanes. In most cases, you should cover at least 50% of the surface with terrain to block firelanes. This may be not correct for some special situations, but you can keep it as a rule of thumb. Once you have broken up firelanes on the ground level, you need some more pieces to structure the upper levels of your map, creating elevated positions to shoot from and blocking firelanes all over the same level. The third important part for your map is the smaller scatter terrain, including all the stuff you can throw into the corridors, on the roofs or wherever you need some more cover. Besides these three essential parts, there are some special terrain pieces you can include in your map, but you don't need to.

The different ways to get your terrain

Papercraft

The easiest and maybe cheapest way to get a majority of your terrain together is using papercrafted terrain. Since the terrain produced by CB directly and used in the old and actual Operation-boxes is based on paper, too, I will include it in this category. The other options here are self-printed and assembled pieces, or premade kits purchased from somewhere. The community already created a lot of general templates for different buildings, walls and even scatter terrain, which can be downloaded for free of for a small tax, but if you want something more sophisticated, you will need to look for special producers like CB or something different in the internet.
If you have found something suitable for your needs and want to start, the only things you need are a reliable printer, some ink, a scissor and fitting glue. Depending on the paper you use for the prints, the terrain will be more sturdy and you may be able to deploy heavier models on it to the cost of material-flexibility. But besides printing and assembling, there is not much work to be done until you can have the first games on your map, since the whole painting-step is already done.

Papercraft terrain in general has the following pros and cons:

+ cheap
+ easy to produce
+ big quantitity of bigger terrain pieces in no time
+ easy to store

- persistence of terrain under constant use
- stability when using metal miniatures
- light weight terrain (easy to displace during the game)
- papercraft-look
- takes a bit to set up

Icestorm

Until the release of Code One and Operation Kaldstrom, each Operation-Box for Infinity included a terrain pack of pre-painted papercraft terrain, consisting of four buildings and four to six containers, depending on the set. The buildings were discussed in the previous articles, since the smaller ones have the problem of being smaller than S7 models. But besides that, the whole terrain is easy to use and to scale up for a whole map. To build an interesting map for a 48x48 map, you will need at least four of these packs, where five or six will give you more opportunities. The combination of containers and buildings let you create different situations and break up most necessary firelanes.
Only the stackability of the buildings is a bit challenging, since they don't fit on each other to 100%. A bit of adjustment from your side may solve the problem. The stability of the terrain is quite okay for papercraft and can be increased with easy to build or to buy inlays for both pieces. This also may solve the weight-problem, since the pieces are normally quite light and easy to move.
If you keep the terrain flexible, it can be stored easily and without much space needed, but even if you don't disassemble the terrain after a game, it does not need to much space. Thanks to the regular shapes, it fits easily into storage-boxes. I would advice to keep the terrain assembled to reduce the impact on the material. The persistence of the material and the paint under constant use is quite good. My set is used constantly over the year and shows no bigger problems after more than two years now.
In summary you will need something about 100€, a bit of adjustment and a bunch of additional scatter-terrain to have an easy to store and to set up map.

An example of the Icestorm paper-terrain, where the higher building is slightly modified to stack better.

A block of polysterene connects the two single buildings to avoid anything crashing through it or the buildings falling apart.

A piece of fiber slab or a filled cardboard-box from CB can and should be added to the terrain to improve the stability and weight.

 

Kaldstrom

Witht the release of Operation Kaldstrom, CB introduced a new set of papercraft terrain. Compared to the former sets, it is improved in many ways. Instead of normal paper, thick cardboard is used, enhancing the stability, weight and persisctence. Also the content is changed. Now not only containers and buildings are included, but stackable buildings from different sizes and different kinds of scatter terrain. These positive changes nevertheless resulted in two disadvantages: The prize increased by app. 10€/set and the assembling seems to be way more difficult. To avoid damages during the assembly, check out Youtube for some tipps and tutorials!
While the old papercraft-sets were quite uniform in pieces and design, this is now changed. Not only that the variety in the core-set is increased, but there are also expansion packs with completely new pieces in it, like an objective room or some sniper-towers. This will allow you to create different kinds of maps with a basic set of pieces and single special ones from the expansion packs, depending on your needs.
Since I don't own this terrain by myself, I have no first hand experience about storage and persistance. The community advices something like four to six sets of this terrain to fill a 48x48 map, resulting in total costs for your map of app. 150€. Since the shapes of the terrain are still regular and the smaller pieces may fit into the bigger ones, it should be easy to store and easy to set up. 

Papercraft

For every other papercraft-terrain the pros and cons of the different CB-versions may also apply. In general, I see two possible approaches for papercraft-terrain: easy to store and easy to produce paper-terrain and persistent cardboard-terrain. Cardboard-terrain will live longer and will be easier to set up for the daily use, but will also be more difficult/expensice to produce and a bit more difficult to store, since you can't disassemble it easily and have to store it in bigger boxes. The easily printed and assembled paper-terrain on the other hand can be disassembled easily and so stored in quite small boxes. But this will force you to assamble it before every game and disassemble it after it, what will take a while and stress the material. Also it is easier to be deformed by use or storage over the time. Nevertheless, if you want to get started and make your first expriences, it is a great way to set up your first maps and then switch to other terrain-types.

An example of papercraft terrain, printed from some files of the internet on slightly thicker paper.

This box fits enough papercraft terrain for a whole 48x48 map.

MDF 

Most of the maps you see on social media (and even on TTS, thanks to the community) consists of laser-cut MDF-terrain kits. The market for those kits grew extremely over the past years and even free files to use with your own or rented laser-cutter get more frequent. Not only the whole amount of general sci-fi MDF-terrain is growing, but also special designed for Infinity-sets become more frequent (like from Warsenal, TTCombat or Micro Art Studios). This allows you to select the terrain fitting to your ideas and needs.
The kits come unassembled in a kind of sprue and need to be assembled, glued and painted. The overall quality of the kits is good, but sometimes you need some refinement during assembly to make everything fit perfectly. Painting may be a bit difficult if you don't own an airbrush or are experienced with spray paints, since the kits get more and more detailled. But even if you have to work with brushes, there are several tutorials for this on Youtube to help you with this issue. If you don't want to paint the terrain, there are some pre-painted kits on the market.
Most of the suppliers not only sell a variety of normal terrain, but also additions and special pieces, as well as scatter terrain. So you can purchase everything you need for your map made from MDF. Depending on what you want for your map, you will end up between 200€ and 350€ for the terrain and about 50€ for rattlecan paints, adding to some time you need for assembling and painting.
For this advances price you will get a good looking and interesting map. Due to the material-properties, all pieces have their own weight, limiting the potential of displacement during the game. Also, assumed a proper sealing of the paintjob, the persistance of the terrain normally is quite good and will guarantee several years of use (I have not seen any teared down MDF-terrain since now). Since there may be different shapes of the pieces, storage can be a bit challenging. This strongly depends on the series you choose, since there are also very easy to store kits, which can be stored easily in smaller boxes, including even the scatter terrain.

So if you don't have the time and/or creativity to build your terrain by yourself, but want an interesting Infinity-map, MDF-kits are the right thing for you. Just consider the needed time for assembling and painting all the terrain during planning. Since you can choose individual kits for your own map, don't plan to short. Many suppliers actually advice how much space you can cover with the kit, so you can plan more easily for how much terrain you will need. But most of the time, you want to reduce the amount a bit to safe time and money, but will end up with a to open map and less fun to play. So plan with the right amount of ressources!

There are many different MDF-kits available on the market, so that there are basic pieces of many kinds of maps.

3D print

Not only lasercutters are becoming more and more frequent in the hobby, but also 3D-printers for private use are a real thing now. These machines allow everyone to print everything out of thermoplasts or resin what you want - in theory. In theory, you now can design your whole map on the computer and then print it on your 3D-printer, put it together and paint it for the costs of the printer, the energy and the material. If you are used to computer-stuff and have some experience with vector-graphics, this may be your approach and in this case, 3D printed terrain may be the best solution for you. But in most cases the steps before it comes to the printing itself cause you some troubles, since most of us are no technical experts in this topic. Desiging your own terrain as printable files then is very difficult and rarely possible, while getting the printer online and working should be doable with some time to try out. Luckily the internet can solve the first problem for you, since it offers free and purchasable pre-made files you can use for printing. Over the past years there were many kickstarter-campaigns creating unique sci-fi files, but you can find a lot on pareon and thingiverse these days. If there is something fitting your needs, you have a great point to start. But even if you have found the files, you need to get them running and fit on your printer. In most cases, you will have to print smaller parts and put them together afterwards, since the private printers won't allow to print quite big pieces in one go. So in the end you will end up with okay-ish costs for your project but maybe the biggest time-investment of all options you have.
Once you have overcome the technical issues, you may get not only a nice looking map, but also terrain designed to use in wargaming. The material used will give most pieces enough weight to not be moved by accident and is sturdy enough to endure transport and storage, but also many games. Like wood or MDF, the material will be thick enough to let heavy pieces be placed on roofs and so on, at least of you have printed them thick enough.

On a side-note, 3D-printing may be the easiest way to create tons of scatter terrain and objectives like tech-coffins and antennas. So even if you don't want to print your whole map, take this option into account when it comes to the smaller pieces.

Selfmade

Depending on your idea for the map and all the other circumstances (time, money, motivation, creativity, talent), a selfmade map can also be an option, maybe the best. To generalise a bit on this topic, you can achieve the best results for your terrain with this 'method' and also with the lowest costs, for the sacrifice of time, creativity and talent. But since the last three points most of the time are the fun-part of the hobby, building your own Infinity-map is the coolest thing to do! In many cases you are forced to go with this, since not every setting can be done with MDF or 3D-printers. On the other hand you are able to create all the things you need, you can imagine and you need rulewise to allow the best interaction during the game. 

Since you can use different materials for your terrain, the persistance may vary together with the needs of storage. Normally you will build more detailed pieces with less durable materials or designs, so that you have to decide on your storage-solutions. If you store each piece individually, nothing will break but you need a lot of space. If you are short on space and have to put everything in one box, details may collide and irregular shapes won't match each other, so that there will be damages. On the other hand you have the chance to design everything in a way to match your own storage- and transport-situation.
 

The choice of material not only affects the persistance, but also the difficulty of production and the costs. The cheapest but also most fragile material may be cardboard. It is available for free in your trash, can be cut easily but is less durable when it comes to contact with other terrain and use.

Some hot-glue and cardboard from packaging can be brought together easily for basic buildings.

Many cardboard materials appearing in your flat can be used for Infinity-terrain. Just glue the boxes together and shield it with blank cardboard to even the surface and create ceilings.

 

More flexible and durable, but also a bit more expensive, is foamboard or whatever this material is called in your locallity. Here, I refer to polysterene blocks, which can be cut with a sharp knife or a hot wire (Proxxon Thermocut!!). The available tools allow you to cut many different shapes and things, so that there are no limits, once you are used to the tools. Problems with this material is the missing ability to use most of the rattlecan spraypaints directly on them, the missing weight of the material and the sensitivity to damages and breaks during the use and transport. A proper sealing may help you with all these issues. 

The most durable option may be solid wood, plastic card or plastic in general. These materials are not that difficult to use for basic shapes and things, but once you go for the details, you will see the limits. Depending on your supplies, this also may be the most expensive way, since you will have to buy everything and can't use things appearing in your flat.

Especially for scatter terrain, polysterene can be cut in many different shapes and sizes to create all the things you need.

Simple polysterene-blocks can be used and fenced with different structures to create buildings of different style and size.

Most of the time you will end up with all materials mixed, creating the look you want. If you are not super experienced in this field, you will need some additional time to plan everything, collect the materials and prepare for failure. In most cases, not everything will turn out in the way you dreamed about it, so plan b is quite common and you should be aware of this. But nevertheless, in the end you will have some great hobby-time and end up with an unique map, fitting your needs and ideas about the game.

Polysterene-blocks of different sizes covered with some cloth and lots of PVA make good and flexible scatter terrain.

Planters made of caps (bottles, rattlecans) and filled with different kinds of moss are also a cheap and easy option to create your scatter terrain. You can fill it with some metal-pieces to gain the needed weight.

To summarize about this topic:
If you are new to the topic and want to try out different things or don't have that much money left, go for papercraft terrain, especially the sets designed directly by CB. They will allow you interesting basic games for a small budget. If you want to advance from this, the solution depends on the factors of time and money. If you are short on time/motivation, but are willing to spend something like 300€, MDF-terrain is your way to go. The internet is full of available and great kits, so that you can find everything you need, If you are short on money but have some time left and at least some motivation (talent is optional!), try to build your own terrain. The included pictures may give you an example of how simple those things can be. If you are searching for some high-level inspiration, you can check out the forums or social media. But in the end, all these solutions will be fine for your game and can be used to display all scenarios you want to play.