Of Men and Mountains

Helloooo Meestar Creemeens:

I took a look at your lovely mountain pics. Pretty cool. I notice some
of
the stuff was done more for looks than game utility. The mountains for
"A
Grey Day To Die" are an important part of the playing board so therefore
they are designed with that in mind. There is only minimal edge
scultping
because I didn't want to have problems with trying to march minis up a
slope. 

I made them out of green R15 insulation - 2" thick styrofoam. I cut the
sheets using a 10" table saw, then did fine sculpts with a hot wire
cutter
(thanks Adrian!). 

Then I discovered that many conventional paints eat styrofoam. not good. 

So I got craft safe black (glossy) paint. I would have preferred matt,
but
there was no option locally. So I spray them with a coat of this black.
Then
I apply speckle stone (I wanted marble cliffs). This paint normally eats
the
foam, but the black primes and protects. The speckle applies not only
colour
but texture. I then decide if it'll be a bare hill or a grassy topped
one.
If the former, I'm done except for a dullcoat coating. If the latter, I
apply a coating of concentrated artists acrylic brown to the top of the
hill
and let it dry (earth). I then coat this area with a mix of white glue
and
water (early experiments have used too thin of a mix) and apply grassy
flocking. When this has dried, I dullcoat the entire result. 

You end up with either a bare looking marblish rock or you end up with a
rock hill with an earth and grass top. If you knock off some grass
flock,
you see the earth below. 

The foam was the hard part - getting a rigid enough foam (many foams are
too
compressible) and a foam that cuts well and does not suffer from
large-cell-itis. Once I found the right stuff, the rest is fairly
straighforward. 

I have plans to build more scenic terrain in future, but this stuff will
provide key terrain for the Lancaster scenario and playability was as
important as looks. Otherwise I would have sculpted the edges of the
hills
far more extensively. I wanted them to be (mostly) close to vertical to
indicate steep slopes and to make movement of figures more easy - the
last
thing I want is for entire squads to come tumbling down the mountain...

And that, to date, is my experience with hillsides. 

Thomas Barclay
Software UberMensch
xwave solutions
(613) 831-2018 x 3008