A Hill Worth Dying On

Posted On January 8, 2018

Banged out four quick hills this weekend.  Two layers of 1/2-inch foamcore shaved to size, mounted on useless CDs, and covered with PVC glue and sand makes for an impressive height on which to fight. 

Generally, I prefer to make my hills gentle so that figures can stand anywhere on them. This style of hill provides a binary on-off that suits the needs of the project.  Remember that the goal is a cheap 4-piece setup that will still look good on camera.  By forcing the players to declare “this figure is on the hill”, this system should prevent any confusion when playing long-distance games via computer camera.

Now that is a commanding height.  It should also be obvious that this hill blocks line of sight for figures on the ground.  The default assumption is that the centerline of the hill serves a LoS blocker for figures trying to see a wizard standing on the top of the hill.

One last shot of the hill next to the house for scale, and then let’s look at a typical terrain set-up.  Here you can see the drop cloths I bought for this project.  The drop cloth needs work, but I thought it might be nice to see how the stream works as a corner cut-off, and how just five terrain items and a little bit of hedging can make for an interesting set-up with lots of tactical decisions.

One of four

Looking at this, I do think each box could use one or two more items of terrain, so that each battle doesn’t feel quite so much like the last.  This is a good set-up, but still limited, because you probably need this many pieces for a good game.  It would be nice to swap out a couple of items, too.

[Edit to respond to Sean’s comment because Blogger is acting like an idiot and won’t let me comment:  They work really well.  Cheap, durable, thin, and consistent in size and shape, they also take PVC glue and sand like a champ.  One word of warning, though, you have to go pretty heavy on the glue and spraycoat primer to completely cover up the shiny rainbows.]

One Comment
  1. sean gewecke

    I'm sure the models atop that hill have a rather majestic view.

    I've not used CDs at terrain bases before, but I think I'm going to give that a try for a 6mm project I'm currently working on.