"Hills" Topic

This year I decided to do mostly terrain for my boards. What I cant seem to find are good hills. I could do mine from insulation sheets, but that material chips, and I don't fancy endlessly repairing them.
Ideally, I would like something in plastic (like the OOP GW hills), but will consider other materials. So, what are your recommendations?

I have no magic bullets, but I've been musing about the same problem and have a few suggestions:

1. Carve them out of styrofoam insulation, then glue on a layer of felt or some other cloth. They'll still be able to crack, but the cloth layer will add a lot of strength and grip. If the flat grassy fields under the hills are cloth (doubtful if you're making terrain boards), you can match them perfectly by covering the hills in the same cloth.
   
2. Carve them out of interlocking foam floor tiles. They're durable (enough to stand on!), light, and relatively easy to cut with a sharp knife. Caveats: it might be a bit of effort to make the cut surfaces smooth, and to cut a shallow slope. These can be painted with latex paints, even drybrushed.
   
3. Make them out of wood (or MDF). It's heavy, but durable and easy to work with.
   

I've been meaning to do #2 for months, but I seem to have run out of time to do any crafting at all. :-(

- Ix

I was thinking out of PVC sheeting (think yoga mat) tacky shoe glue and universal grouting silicon (not the waterproof foul smelling stuff) cut shapes glue onto each other grout (believe this even comes in a brown colour, add sand,PVA paint and flock. Very light, does not chip or break and the PVC can be sanded to smooth shapes too. I've done an experimental hill and yes it works.
Cheers hope this helps I'm looking to do some Western/Mars type hills this way soon.

I have built hills as described by Yellow Admiral in suggestion 1. I use the same cloth to cover the hills as my ground cloth. Both start as sage felt with a bunch of spray paint to make them look less uniform. Some of my hills are 20 years old and still work fine.

I prefer "wedding cake" hills with bevelled edges over sculpted ones for two reason: 1) I can make the wedding cakes hills as described so that they match my ground cloth while sculpted hills rarely match the color of the ground cloth and 2) with sculpted hills individually mounted figures seem to be incessantly tipping over and looking sloppy.

Buck Surdu

Battlefield Terrain Systems ( battlefieldterrain.com )
has some nice resin hills. If you use insulation I seal mine with Latex house paint ( and cover with turf while still wet ) . I lucked into a huge GeoHex collection so only need to make those "special" pieces

Make out of wood?

Form the bulk out of the foam, then take some thinned out casting plaster to brush on a few layers followed by a layer of watered down white glue…the end result is pretty good

I bought a few wood plaques from a craft store. I put them under my felt table cloth. Smaller sizes like 12inches or less cost $3.00 USD or less. They have bevelled edges. They come in oval and square.

I reinforce my styrofoam hills with several layers of newspaper soaked in white glue. It works really well.

Thanks for your suggestions. I will start some tests soon.

I just use ordinary polystyrene carved to shape then coated in wood glue and sand. Paint brown and drybrush and than flock. Seems pretty resiliant to me.

I also just use expanded polystyrene.

Two coats of undiluated PVA all over to harden it, then another coat of PVA + builders sand + paint.

Flock as desired.

Wood hills are fine, but they can warp and are incredibly heavy to carry around.

I forgot to mention warping as a downside of wood. Good point.

- Ix

I use these…

link

They are great because they are pre-cut and they come in a variety of shapes and sizes.

Amera's vac formed seem to meet you criteria. Inexpensive, light and robust.

amera.co.uk

Under the Fantasy Realms section.