1st Installment: Game boards and tables Welcome to the second installment to "Terrain Boy's Guide to Better Tabletops". This article will focus on the different techniques and materials that can be used to create hills, cliffs/ridges, and plateaus. All of these are designed to be placed on a flat tabletop. The first thing you should do is gather the materials you'll need. Standard beaded styrofoam works OK, but I highly recommend the blue or pink board insulation material (.75 – 2" thick) as it is much easier to cut and holds up well. To cut the hills, you can use a bread knife, a hot-wire cutter (found in the crafts section at Wal-Mart stores for $10), or a surform tool found at your local building supply store. Premium wood glue works very well for bonding multiple pieces together, but it may be better to use the construction adhesive that is designed for the insulation boards. Textured paint, kitty litter (new of course!), green or brown latex house paint, Elmer's glue (PVA) and flocking material will be needed to finish your hills. The first thing to do is cut out your hills. There are two basic styles of cut for hills: natural & gamers. Natural hills will be smoothly sloped to the pinnacle of the hill. The cut should be at a more extreme angle and smoothed with a surform tool (kind of a rough rasp for shaping). You don't want any sharp angles for the natural look. The gamers style would be a cut at about at 45 degree angle all the way around the hill. The top would be flat so that hills could be stacked on top of each other forming terraces for figures to stand on. This style is more practical for placing figures on the hill, but looks less real. Either way works fine though. If you want a ridge or cliff face, be sure to use a thick piece (or pieces glued together) and cut one side with uneven perpendicular cuts. Go over the edges with the surform tool to roughen it up. If you need a plateau for smaller scales of figures, cut a large piece(3 – 4 feet works well) and shape it as you would a regular hill. Broader instead of taller is the goal. After you have your hill(s) cut out, decide if you want the hill to have any rocks or rough edges exposed. This gives the hills character and livens up the landscape from the basic "manicured lawn" look. Either paint on some of the textured paint or glue some of the kitty litter where you want the exposed surface to be. This doesn't have to be nice and neat since nature wears away surfaces to different degrees. Be sure to use plenty of glue for the kitty litter. Once the paint or glue dries paint the whole hill with a brown latex paint. If you have areas where you want soil to be exposed drybrush increasingly lighter shades of brown. Drybrush gray onto the textured paint or kitty litter to give the base color to the rocks. You may want to give the rocky area a black wash (1:1 paint and water mixture) to achieve the look you want. Carefully drybrush white onto the edges of the rocks to "weather" the surface a bit. Next, use a paint brush to place the Elmer's glue on the areas of the hill where you want grass (should be most of it unless you are working a very rocky landscape). Cover the glue with green flocking (Woodland Scenics Green Blend is my recommendation). Let the hill dry for a few hours then cover the whole thing with a 1:1 glue and water mixture. Sprinkle on more flock in the grass areas. Let dry overnight. The flock will absorb the water-glue mixture becoming very hard after it dries. Your hills should be complete. Use these same techniques for sand dunes (using Desert Blend flock or beach sand). If you want really large rocks, glue the real thing onto the hills or shape some styrofoam pieces and cover them with textured paint. Paint them the same way as described above. Finally, add some small pieces of foliage in various places to represent bushes and other plants that may grow in the region. This adds a nice touch for presentation on the tabletop. [The next article will focus on trees. All types] Companies that produce ready made hills: Geo-Hex 2126 North Lewis Portland, Oregon 97227 Phone: (503) 288-4805 Fax: (503) 288-8992 e-mail: krs@geohex.com http://www.geohex.com/ War Zone GTS 1400 Kra-Nur Drive Burton, Michigan 48509 Phone: (810) 742-8830 Fax: (810) 234-6259 e-mail: warzone@tir.com http://www.tir.com/~warzone/ Back to The Gauntlet No. 12 Table of Contents Back to The Gauntlet List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Craig Martelle Publications This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com