All Game Terrain Review - Battlefield Beauty

Ask any seasoned model train builder, wargaming expert, or miniature tabletop battlefield crafter about the biggest names in the scenery game, and invariably they'll mention Woodland Scenics. The company, which has been around since the 1970s, has consistently created the tools and materials modelers need to make their scenery come to life. Now, the company's taking note of how often gamers come to their products for everything from model bases to terrain features, and have carved out a separate product line called All Game Terrain.

This week, we received from Woodland Scenics a complimentary assortment of All Game Terrain products, so we put them to the test to see how they stack up! Read on for our All Game Terrain review of some of their featured products.

All Game Terrain - Sand, Soil, Grass, and Gravel

First up, let's dive into the All Game Terrain products mean for flocking and basing your scenery, miniatures' bases, and more. In a moment, I'll show some process steps that went toward creating some scatter terrain and how it all comes together, but I also want to talk about each item individually. You can refer to the picture below for each item we cover.

First up, there's the All Game Terrain Base Layer (Soil) and All Game Terrain Sand (Natural). Both of these items work great as a base depending on your modeling needs. For beachfront or desert locales, the Sand pours very nicely, sticks well to the glue included (more on that in a bit), and looks incredibly natural. But I really, really love the Base Layer soil. This rich, dark brownish-green base layer gives a realism and depth to everything we'll lay on top of it.

Continuing on from left to right, we see the All Game Terrain Gravel (Natural) and the Grass (Summer), both of which I really like as well. The gravel is mostly composed of yellowish rocks, but there's a fair amount of green flocking scattered throughout to really make this pop. I specifically like using the Gravel to create walkways or give the hint of paths in my scenery. As for the grass, it's a very fine pour, pre-blended with some yellow-greens to really sell it as a hazy, summer-faded grass.

Finally, there are the Weeds (Spring Green), which clump really well. Whether I was scattering them lightly to give some three dimensionality to my designs, or clumping them together to create a small shrub, I loved the feel of these weeds.

All Game Terrain - Glues and Base Paint

Up next, I'll briefly touch on the assortment of glues and cover paint we received, if only to point out how much I like the Magic-Tac and Super Seal. While I found the Earth colored Base Paint they included in this set to be useful for a quick basing (it's a nice dark green and brown color), I was much more interested in just covering my bases with thick coatings of grasses and soils.

But that Magic-Tac is truly, as the name implies, magic. Extremely tacky after letting it sit for a bit, what I like most about the Magic-Tac is how long it remains moveable. Don't like exactly where you placed that boulder? Give it a swivel! And the Super Seal, which sprays nicely from their sprayer bottle, ensures that all of your ground cover sticks and sticks well.

All Game Terrain - The Secret Sauce

Finally, I want to chat about the two other items included in this gift package, what I like to call "The Secret Sauce." Both the boulders and the EZ BUSHES completely blew me away. These boulders have some of the most realistic detail I've seen in scenery, though I will admit the Boulder we tried, which are surface boulders, are rather flat. As such, you'll need multiple stacks on one another to create any sort of line of sight blocking. But look at how they stack!

And then there are the EZ BUSHES, which are a clump of synthetic bushes (this was the Winter Mix) that can be cut, smushed together, pulled apart to create vines, and more. Highly flexible, I found myself gluing a little patch of these wherever my designs were looking a little flat.

Building Scatter Terrain With All Game Terrain

To show you how it all comes together, I did a bit of a step by step on how to make a piece of scatter terrain using some of the products we received. Follow along to see how easy it was for me to use everything and -- on what was essentially my first try -- put together a piece of scenery I'm really pleased with.

After gathering all of my materials, I applied the Magic-Tac to the back of my boulder in a thin layer and let it sit a bit to get tacky, then I glued that to my base and I set out a small path of gravel.

From there, as you can see above, I used the Super Seal to spray a fine mist of adhesive to the rest of the base.

Next, I carefully poured my Base Layer soil all around, creating a rich, dark texture. This soil really helps create a bouncy, natural-looking floor level to my grass.

Next, it was time to add the grass. I love the slightly faded, summery look of this grass, and think it lays really nicely atop the soil.

The key to creating something that has nice layers and depth to it, I've found, is to not be afraid to really heap on the Super Seal spray. In between each layer, I gave everything a thin misting, and it helped with the "frozen in time" look of the piece.

Finally, all that was left was to add some finishing touches, including some EZ BUSHES that a glued down with a little blob of Magic-Tac, and Spring Green Weeds that I clumped together to give a little more dynamism to the piece.

I couldn't be more thrilled with how this turned out. From the realism of the boulder to the way the EZ BUSHES ended up drying and laying, this is the kind of miniature moment on the tabletop that really elevates a miniature game. 

All Game Terrain - Final Thoughts

As you can see from reading this review, I'm absolutely floored by how easy to use and approachable these All Game Terrain scenery products are, and I can't wait to create more scenic moments for my gaming table. If you're interested in getting into creating your own gaming scenery, All Game Terrain is a great place to start. Even now, as I'm finishing up this review, I've got my eye on other products in the range - like flowers and deadfall - that I can't wait to add to my collection.

Even if you're brand new to basing miniatures or building terrain, the ease of use and professional look of All Game Terrain makes it, in my opinion, an absolutely must-try.

The products used in the creation of this review were provided to us by Woodland Scenics. All photographs courtesy of the author.