Wargames Scenery
For the Common Man

Project 1: New Set of Hills

by Howard Whitehouse

SEVEN SHORT DAYS, AN HOUR A DAY, TO A NEW SET OF HILLS!

You need hills, of course you do (quieten down there, Dutchboy!) Most wargame hills are pathetic things, puny, undersized and mostly broken. So let's make some, a batch of about six or eight to get into the idea of mass production.

Step 1) Get a piece of Styrofoam. Draw a basic outline. Don't care what size, anything from 6" to 36" long (real hills are much bigger than anything you'll see in a WRG tournament). Cut it out with an craft knife, razor blade, whatever. Using either an expensive hot wire tool or an old breadknife (a bit messier, but, what the hell --) carve slopes or reasonable facsimiles thereof at angles ranging from very shallow to near vertical, 450 being about average. Sandpaper the contour line lightly.

Step 2) Enthralled by your efforts, cut a smaller piece in the same way, and glue it on top with wood glue or Liquid Nails. Go crazy and add more if you like, I don't care. Use thicker bits of foam for cliff-like formations, It looks pretty rough at this point, very stair-steppy, with all the joints showing. Most idiots would now paint it bright green and call it done. Wrong!

Step 3) First of all, draw the outline of the base contour onto a piece of wood/hardboard etc, allowing an extra 1-2". No need to be too exact as to shapes. Cut out this base, preferably using a saw that will cut it at a 45 degree angle to avoid a step up from the table. The wooden base will increase the life expectancy of your hill by about 700%, I kid thee not.

Step 4) Is this to be a rocky hill strewn with boulders or a smooth acre of downland? If the former, glue down some bark chips and/or bits of your gravel driveway at artistic points. Let it dry.

Step 5) Mix up a batch of plaster, adding to it some sand or sawdust for texture. Smear this on those areas where you see joints, on exposed upper surfaces, and anywhere else you like. What we are making is about halfway between the famous wargame stairstep hill, which looks terrible but at least your figures stand up, and a fully sloped hill, where they don't. If you get it right -and you will - you will have a good looking piece of real estate that works. So stop moaning and trowel on the plaster mix. Let it dry property, which means about twenty minutes on a summer's afternoon in Georgia, and about four weeks in November in a Manchester garage.

Step 6) Time to paint it. Paint any grey rocky areas first, drybrush some highlights, let them dry before you go for the grassy bits. If it's a nice green hill I paint it with my vile brown exterior latex and sprinkle on the Woodland Scenics, usually with a mix of different shades of greens and browns since most hills do not get the care of the men who look after the lawns at Wimbledon. If it's a really nice, forty- shades-of-green hill for Ireland or the stockbroker belt I might use a green paint, but basically I prefer scruffy, olive-drab landscapes that look like several thousand hooligans might drag cannon over them. If you look at a landscape from a plane, you can observe that it ain't usually as green as it looks on the ground. Too bright and it looks like toyland. Don't get me on those wargamers with the emerald green felt scenery; I mean, do these characters never leave the house?

Step 6 A) For desert scenery I do it slightly differently. Add some sawdust and a bit of plaster (if you haven't slathered it on thickly previously) to the brown paint. Daub it on and sprinkle fine sand onto it before it dries. When dry, shake off the excess sand and dry brush a highlight shade over the whole thing, which the sand will pick up. Use the spray paints sparingly Igor! - to add interesting red and yellow ochres effects. Dry brush some more, When it looks about right, it is! Interestingly enough, for those total cheapskates who don't want to use Woodland Scenics or similar flocking, you can make green hills exactly the same way, using sand over green paint, then highlighting with yellows. I've done this and it can look very effective.

Step 7) Once it's all dry, squirt sporadic globs of white glue wherever you think a bush, bit of random herbage or scattered stones might fit. I like the W. S. coarse turf for this, with torn up bits of their foliage clusters and ballast for small stones, You can use cat litter if you like, clean or otherwise. You're not still using lichen are you? Put it away --

You've got a nice hill, actually six or eight of them. Counting the stages between drying times you'll notice there are, er, seven. I can do each of those stages in about an hour if I'm making six hills about the size of a dinner plate. An hour a night and you've got a set of hills in a week, Your humble writer built twelve feet of connecting hills, being the Union position at Gettysburg from the Round Tops to Culp's Hill in five days, about an hour and a bit per session, counting two sessions on two days that I didn't have to go to my real job. Looks good too, and breaks up into other conformations, but we'll discuss that anon --More on hills and rocks: Really imposing scenery can be made my stacking Styrofoam in layers with rough-looking rock formations carved out of them, Pinebark chips and actual stones add to the effect. For small rock outcrops, just glue pieces of bark and small stones onto a piece of card, and fill in the gaps with plaster.

For GreenWorld Scenery, paint the rock faces a brownish grey, with variations by misting and drybrushing; once dry, take the brown paint and grass flocking and put a bit on all the horizontal surfaces. Grass grows wherever it can! You want a mellow, aged look rather than a science fiction effect! As a rule, even the tallest rock formations don't have to be more than 6-8" high with 25mm figures, and may be smaller with littler men. Beyond that, the scale gets outlandish and looks wrong. Stuff a paper cup with newspaper and use it for the core of a Monument Valley butte!

Right then. One project down, a new set of hills, and you've got some of the basic techniques in order. While we're hot, let's build some rivers and streams --Project Numero Dos.

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© Copyright 2000 Hal Thinglum
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