"Alien Desert Planet: Functional Dunes For 15mm?" Topic

How do you guys scratch build dunes like these and still make them functional (without toppling figures)?

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Dan

In Australia there's a chap who makes nice rubber hills (not Miniature World Maker) that look a lot like those pictured – sorry can't remember his outfit here at work.

Key bit of advice he gave was to do a coat of magnetic paint and to use figures on magnetic bases. I haven't got round to doing anything with these hills, and since I don't use magnetic basing that much I can't vouch for how good the idea is.

Other thought would be clever use of the hill's contour lines to allow miniatures to be put on them.

Either with metal, or magnetic sheeting, and the opposite for the bases, if you want them to be that steep.

I once heard of somebody making his dunes out of soft foam from a mattress or cushion. The way he got the figures to stand up was to cut a series of horizontal slits around the dune, which the figure bases could slide into. I don't think I ever heard whether or not it worked for him.
Grelber

Time to go old school and use a sand table!

A local guy has some interesting modular table system.

His hills have strings glued to them in elevation bands. They look ok after you paint everything. It shows you the height of a hill and allows you to rest figs on it.

Bean Bags duct taped to a base and covered with a cloth, preferably thin canvas with sand glued to it. Taping the bean bags to a base means they can squish a bit to put figures on, but will still retain the requisite diameter and thus, roughly the requisite height. The cloth over top avoids the piecemeal look (which I do use for other types of terrain, but I like the cover sheet for sand and snow). This works reasonably for metal figures or plastic figures on metal bases (fender washers). I also put "grip pads", like for kitchen drawer liners, under the base to keep the dunes from moving around during play.

The major drawback is if you want small to medium (~<3" diameter), but tall (over 3") terrain peieces on top. Sometimes, squishing the bean bags around will tople small them.

My wife and I sewed a bunch of custom bean bags. As opposed to making clothes that look good, sewing a bean bag that will be hidden under a cloth together was pretty easy. And remember, if you can't sew on your own, you're not ready for the zombie apocalypse.

Yes, a sand table would probably be best.