Making ACW wheat fields

 When gearing up to play any ACW game somewhere along the line you are going to come across a wheat field or two. Lines of blue and grey troops advancing over yellow, bristling farm land is part of the very essence of the civil war. If like me you are aiming to recreate moments from Gettysburg, then the wheat field stops being a piece of terrain and becomes an objective and a must to have. So I thought I would have a go at making some.

 I started off with a green textured door mat, which I cut into different random shapes. The idea being that these can be removed to fit the units of troops in as they march across the field. However, from a low angle they still appear to be a solid field of bristling wheat.

 Once the pieces were cut out they were sprayed three times with different colour paints. The first was a reddish brown, the second was a mid yellow colour. The last spray paint was a lighter yellow which was done very lightly over the very top of the fields to give a highlight.

 I tried to keep the odd bit of green in the fields to add realism and make it look like some plants were ripening. The shapes of mat were now given a good blast with matt varnish to take off any shine.

 Once pushed together the random shapes become one solid field.

 A figure for scale shows that the door mat makes a great wheat field, coming up to about waist high on an infantry figure and leg high on a mounted one.

Once last touch was to add just a tiny amount of green flock to some of the shapes to act as foliage growing up in the wheat. Finished.