GROUND FINISHED

In this article, I'll be taking a look ant some of the different ways to represent the ground, both on the table, and on Terrain pieces bases, and indeed, the pieces themselves.
It is often said, that nothing looks better than a battle between fully painted armies, on fully modeled scenery. This is an odd statement if you look at it. If you take it literally, the battle could takeplace on a bare table, scattered with random buildings!
Clearly, what you really need is an appropriately modeled battlefield, with cohesion between all the terrain items. The easiest way to achieve this is to base all the terrain pieces in the same way!

The Ground:

The first thing to think about, and the first thing to make, is the ground itself. Ask yourself, do you want to play your battles in Lush jungles, across rolling fields, alien wastes, burning deserts, or in the bowels of cities? Or, do you want to be able to do several different types of battle ground? If you want several types, can they all have similar bases so you only need one type of ground?
Basically, you will find that all the terrain types conceivable fall into the following categories as far as ground is concerned: Green, Brown, Tan, Grey, White, and Black. What am I on about, you ask? Well, the traditional rolling green hills so beloved by gamers are green, and so are jungles, forests, and anywhere else with grass underfoot. Waste lands tend to be brown (dirt), while desert sand is Tan. Concrete roads in cities are grey, while asphalt is black. Snow and ice are, of course, white. So the first thing to do, is decide what color the ground is. Remember, a lot of different areas have similar ground colors. For instance, at HGC, we use brown cloths for alien wastelands, ruined cities, jungle, and the chaos wastes.
When you decide what color the ground is, you've got two options. Either you model the ground onto a table (which looks cool, but is not so practical), or just use a cloth. Cloths mean you can use one table, but have several cloths representing different climates and terrain types, even planets!
You'll need to measure your table to decide how big the cloth needs to be. A word of warning: cloth tends to be at maximum 5ft wide.

The bases:

Now that you have your ground color sorted, you can make your bases match it. The simplest way is just to paint them the same color. Of course, this looks kind of lame, so modeling them is a better option. Here's a quick guide to the basic types of ground, and how to do them:

Grass: Simply paint the base green, and cover in flock or static grass.
Flock is more durable, but it doesn't look as good. Static grass stands up realistically, and is composed of fibers. It looks good, and it's soft, so you're minis won't get damaged if you knock them over.
Grass bases look good with a little extra detail, like adding dirt paths to doors and so forth.

Wasteland: We use this at HGC for jungle, and also Chaos Wastes sort of terrain. Basically, cover the base in sand, and paint it black. Then, dry brush with dark brown (i.e.: Scorched Brown) and add random patches of static grass.

Dirt: This is just like wasteland, just without the static grass.

Desert: Desert terrain works like dirt, except that you paint it a orange-brown, like snake bight leather, and then dry brush with a bone color. Keep in mind that Deserts are inhospitable,e so there should be no vegetation in evidence at all.

Concrete: Cover the base in plaster, and sand it flat. Paint the lot neutral grey, and give it a Black wash. This type of base is very flexible, because it looks like a plinth or base under the terrain. This means you can plunk down concrete based terrain anywhere, and it looks right.

Asphalt: Like dirt, but you give it a very light drybrush with grey.

Snow: I've never tried this, but white painted sand, with possibly, a blue wash. I live in Australia, so I've only actually seen snow twice in my life (when I was about 6 or 7 I think), so i could be wrong here.

Of course, you can also mix the terrain types. You could have an asphelt are around a building, with grass on the edges of the base for instance.

Remember to get your bases to replicate the ground as closely as possible. Get your ground first, as it's easier to match the base to a cloth, than to find a cloth which matches the base. Also, remember to keep the bases consistent thorough out your collection.