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by Gary James
Hills are one of the most useful and easiest terrain pieces of all. The addition of a few hills and trees does more to transform a boring table into an interesting landscape than anything else.
When making hills you have to decide whether you are going for realism or ease of gameplay. Realistic hills have continuously sloping gradients and miniatures will fall over on all but the gentlest of slopes. To prevent this many people prefer 'stepped' hills, in which the hill rises in a number of steps rather than as a slope. I have found that you can get away with realistic sloping hills for Epic 40K because the miniatures are small and don't fall over. For 40K and Fantasy I recommend the stepped hills. Of course, you can always make some realistic hills too and just say they are too steep to be able to walk up!
Materials
- Sheets of 1 inch thick styrofoam
- PVA glue
- Green paint
- Flock or sand, whichever you prefer.
Method
- Cut oval sections (or whatever shaped hill you are planning) out of the polystyrene sheet using a knife or hot wire cutter. Cut smaller and smaller layers from the polystyrene to get the height of hill you want. I suggest your layers are small enough to leave a shelf as wide as a miniature base on each 'step' when stacked up.
- I tend to leave my hill steps separate so that I can vary the hill layout. If you want to join them together spread them with PVA glue and push cocktail sticks through to pin them together.
- Paint green and cover with flock or cover with sand and then paint it green. Drybrush with a lighter green if desired.
- Stepped hills look much more realistic if you add a few crag faces here and there.
- For super strength hills I base them on strong plywood and cover them with a thin layer of modelling clay before painting and flocking.
