Tall Grass for Colonial-era Wargames

"An' there's that rummy silver grass a-wavin' in the wind,
An' the old Grand Trunk a-trailin' like a rifle sling be'ind."
........................................................--Kipling, Route Marchin'

Tall Grass
for Colonial-era Wargames

Tall grass is a common feature of the African veldt and other colonial landscapes. Its ability to conceal but not hinder movement makes it useful in scenario design, but it is always a problem to represent on wargame tables. One frequent solution is brush-bristle welcome-mat material or astroturf, but the figures stand ridiculously on top of the grass, unless removable segments are cut - awkward to use and not very flexible. Another common solution is merely to mark the edge of the grassy area - very playable and flexible, but not visually realistic.

A few years after he moved away from Dallas and the Ouargistan group, David noticed two materials that seemed to solve the problem very effectively.

Feather Boas
Hobby Lobby carries fluffy feather boas (sometimes called maribous) for creating costumes and exotic clothing. The "Shanghai 1931's Feather Boa," creates excellent dense feathery grass areas that swallow up figures.

The picture shows one boa laid around the edge of a felt terrain marker, and continued in a spiraling pattern into the center. The boa is very thickly furred, six feet long, and costs only $3.99 (2004 price). With a long enough piece or several short pieces, a tall-grass area of any size or shape can be laid out. It would be best to use an area marker of felt or other material to determine the exact border of the grass patch, in case the boa gets moved in the placing of figures.

The figures can be placed anywhere in the area, standing straight and compressing the light strands. If they happen to get on top of the central cord, shift it out of the way at that point. The appearance of the figures is very good since they're actually down in the grass. 28mm figures almost disappear in it. I had to part the grass a little to make the figures more recognizable in the photo at left.

Useful colors include the gold shown, a sage (dulled green), and perhaps some of the browns or ivory. The boas tend to migrate between the fabric department and the 'Wearable Art' department, so you may have to ask an employee. They used to be carried on the Hobby Lobby website, where they could be ordered by manly gamer types without embarassment, but the natural colored boas are no longer available there (2006). Let's hope this doesn't mean the stores will be dropping them.

Trims
Trims are fabric edging material sold by the foot off a sort of reel in fabric shops and sewing departments. Most are just decorated cords of various colors, but some are fluffy, rather like ostrich feathers.

Before discovering the feather boas, David found this trim in Hobby Lobby during a half-off fabric sale and bought three feet of it to experiment.

Shown above is a single strand of the trim laid out behind the figures on a terrain marker of varicolored felt. The trim is a sort of cord with fluffy olive-green strands radiating from it in all directions.

Here the trim goes around the edge of the terrain marker, and spirals it in to the center. This three-foot cord would do a larger area than this; the grass would just not be as dense.

The trim material costs about twice as much per foot as the feather boa, and is coarser and more irregular. Short sections of it cut and placed between boulders would make an impressive patch of rough terrain.

The figures sit straight and compress the strands. As with the boa, if they happen to get on top of the cord and lean a bit, you can easily shift the cord out of the way.

The irregular green trim is also a quick and easy way to mark the edges of jungle or forested areas, or even fill them with undergrowth between the trees - it wouldn't be too hard to use numerous pieces of the trim for the undergrowth, leaving more open trails and clearings between the dense patches.

So far, the boa and trim are experimental and have yet to be used in an actual game, but they promise to be the quickest, easiest, most flexible, and most realistic way to make long grass for the gaming table.

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