"How would you make a mountain?" Topic

In Alien Squad Leader, you can field a terrain piece known as Mountains. It is considered impassible, and can be a square between 20cm and 40cm per side.

If you were going to create such an terrain item, how would you do it? Plastic flower pot(s)? Styrofoam packing material? Paper mache?

I would uses the long lost Major-General Tremordon Rederring's Colonial Wargames Site profile mountains for impassible terrain

His mountains can be found here: link

Bingo! I have been looking for something similar I saw once. Obviously one or the other was inspired by the other. The ones I saw were more substantial than cardboard and just painted not sculpted. I came across them when looking at Soviet Afghan war info so definitely location specific rather than period.

Just looking at your title, my first thought was clashing tectonic plates. But you need something smaller and cheaper.

Depends a bit on the rules. If they can contain troops, the Reddington method looks good, and Styrofoam sheets--I always save them when I find them--stacked edgewise look quite feasable. Plan B--fastest and easiest--would be styrofoam sheets stacked flat for a "birthday cake" effect, a little more like Monument Valley. If they are never to contain troops, paper mache would be tempting, and I'd try to rig them for nested storage.

And I forgot the classic! Stack rubble around a flak tower. Much faster than the tectonic plate method.

I would use crumpled cardboard, for an armature; papier mache' for the skin. Alternatively, you could use plaster bandage cloth: soak in water, wring out excess, apply over your armature (crumpled aluminum foil over cardboard, to protect it from the water); apply successive layers, as needed, to provide full coverage. This is the material doctors use for making casts around broken bones, years ago; today, they use a fiberglass material, soaked in water to activate it, applied and shaped -- it heats up as it cures/dries.

Alternatively, you can use pink/blue insulation foam. Glue layers together, using foam glue, not PVA Glue, which will never dry… Then cut it to shape with a hot wire cutter, or a razor knife/saw. You can chip away at it with a razor blade, to make its surface, rough and rugged.

In all honesty, I would use my modular hills, stacked, to form a mountain, because it is so modular, and so fast, simple, and easy. These modular hills were made by cutting open-cell packing foam into shape with a Proxxon Hot Wire Cutter, then covered with Tee-Time Carpet cut-off's from the ground cloth; the carpet was cut to fit, top and sides, attached with a Low Temperature Hot Glue Gun (easy-peasy, fast, simple, and durable). Cheers!

I built a mountain a little larger than this out of insulation foam segments stacked and glued on one another for a game. I wanted to have some cliffs, which I cast out of plaster, using model railroad rock molds.

It was a large piece, and I sold it off a couple years after the convention I made it for. It almost fit in a smaller plastic box, but not quite, so it lived in a larger box, taking up extra space. If I had it to do over again, I would select a box for storage, then make the mountain to fit in the box.

Grelber

If I were going to make a mountain, I would certainly start with a molehill.

Just sayin'.

I'd probably go to the craft store and buy some squishy foam, or a block of the hard green foam that is used for floral decoration.

eh, amateurs! You need to use mashed potatoes ala Close Encounters of the Third Kind… ;-)

Mountain can be easy if they sides are cliffs. Tiered mountains are harder. Floral/ craft styrofoam are easy to carve with the special hot wire trimmer. A little harder with a sarated knife.
When I was growing up, we owned two flower shops. So I was able get a lot of used blocks. Original wire trimmers were large and stationary. However, they did make a wand handle version later. So tiered became the way to go.

Use pins to hold blocks together in order to make the mountain higher.

Just looking at your title, my first thought was clashing tectonic plates. But you need something smaller and cheaper.

Clashing tectonic saucers then.
: 3

I would go with the aformentioned stacks of pink foam, having first prototyped the shape with mashed potatoes to ensure the vision was correct.

Bill, thanks for the link to the Tremordon site!

I adapted Tremordan's mountains to make modular chiseled/hewn cavern wall sections.

I crumpled brown paper grocery sacks, as he does, Hot Gluing them to pink foam insulation pieces (Low Temperature Hot Glue Gun, only, as a High Temperature Glue Gun will melt the pink foam…). I cut the pink foam insulation to size and shape on my band saw. The textured paper sack formed the chiseled surfaces. I base painted them, followed by dry brushing to bring out the sculpted, chiseled look.

Later on, I painted them white, to create modular ice cavern wall sections for G2: Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, a classic fantasy RPG adventure module.

Tremordan's concept is superb, as presented, but it can be used for other terrain types, as well. Cheers!

"You need to use mashed potatoes ala Close Encounters of the Third Kind"

As an Indiana native, I warn you to never take construction advise from someone wearing a Ball State t-shirt. Anyway, the VA wouldn't let me be in the same room as mashed potatoes, let alone that many of them.

So many good ideas!

Oberlindes, what do you feed a molehill? I usually go for grudges and an inflated sense of self-importance. But what else is there?

miniMo, excellent idea. Melmac, you think?

If I were going to make a mountain, I would certainly start with a molehill.

It did just occur to me that one could make a plaster cast of a molehill and then use that to crank out a whole mountain range of resin pieces!