Project: Gaming Table - Terrain

One thing I really lack is a proper gaming table and good terrain. We most often go to stores and use their tables or at home use Vince's board (which is at my house and he always complains about though he never comes to pick it up :P). Vince's board is certainly nice, two pieces, sturdy and not barren in terms of a single color and no features but our usual terrain is...well cityfight buildings and whatever we can scrounge up. Not ideal for a proper board, great for themes but not a balanced fight.

Where's this all going? Well Dethtron's awesome Gaming on a Budget - Table version has given me some great inspirations. I admit I was an avid follower of this series at the beginning but I forgot to keep up with it. Now that he's finished it I've gone back and looked at the individual articles and it doesn't look that hard! Couple pieces of plywood, lots of that styrofoam stuff, a hot wire cutter, some paint and an idea and we imagine I could at least get the table down.

The theme I have in mind is a huge ice flow - much like the basis of my Space Marines bases. I've always loved snow themes for my models and the back stories of all my armies are tied up in a particular region of snow/ice planets. Having a snow board would therefore be awesome. I'd be looking at doing something akin to this:

In terms of execution, not too hard. Get a lot of the styrofoam but rather than making hills out of them, they'll be the basis of the actual board on top of the plywood. The important part here will be to plan the placement of the separate 'ice sheets' so the gaps between them give a great effect where the gaps between the sheets aren't big enough to swallow models.

That gives what I hope will be an excellent basis for a general board layout. From there we of course need a mix of terrain pieces. More styrofoam is easy enough to generate some hills which we can keep with the same theme or have as rocky outcrops (seen below). Some sort of trees, whilst not exactly realistic on an ice flow, can be made to fit the theme pretty easily with some snow flock and area base, etc. and some ruins with snow decorations, etc. as well.

The question before I embark upon this project is two-fold. First, what do people mount their area terrain (such as trees, ruins, etc.) on? Compressed wood or something similar? And do people have any other ideas in making other terrain types, etc. The more variety the better obviously and I will need to ensure some of it (ruins or rocky outcrops come to mind) blocks line of sight.

Anyway, this project won't get started for a couple of months and will probably make a display base for my armies at the same time using the same concepts but any and all information and input would be greatly appreciated. A big thanks to Dethtron for the inspiration and chats we've had in planning this!