HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN TERRAIN:
Hills

• Lumber (plywood or board)
• scroll saw
• paint
• Optional items include felt and terrain decorations

1. Get a board. This is the most variable element. The height of the wood used will depend both upon the scale of your game, and your preference. for some games (like Battletech) you will want elevation levels about half the height of the figure (about 1"). On the other hand, you might want full coverage of pieces. Once you decide on height, the type of wood couldbe either a board or a piece of plywood. For Battletech and WH40K I use mostly 1X10 boards.
2. Cut the shape out. You can use simple ovals, or hourglasses, or any variation... Plywood allows more unusual shapes and L's. If your saw can cut at an angle, a sloped side is highly attractive. As an option, you can run a router around the edges (which can look really good). Remember, always wear eye protection when using power tools.
3. Paint the sucker. This is easy, but you can make it as hard as you want. Fancy blended colors, unusual sci-fi effects, or just plain old green.
4. Optional decorations: A few spots of frock, or sand (glued on and painted) can add some depth and make the whole thing look better. Just about anything can be glued onto a hill if you want it there.
5. It may be to your benefit to glue a quantity of felt to the bottom of the hill. This has several benefits... first, it keeps from scuffing up your mom's dining room table, and it also helps keep it in place. You don't have to cover the whole bottom, but it does take more than just a few little circles to get all the benefits.

• Bucket
• newspaper strips

I have a recipe for hills which I stumbled upon when I was about seven.

I got a large bucket. A huge bucket. An ENOOOOORMOUS bucket. Sorry, anyway, I poured some water in it. Warm water, but only because it's nicer to work with. Then I tore up a lot of newspaper into strips, and put it into the bucket. The strips have to be large enough not to fall apart in water.

Anyway, you swirl the whole lot round with a stick till it's thoroughly waterlogged. Then you take the newspaper out and slap the gooie mass onto a board. Mold it till it looks like something vaguely similar to a hill. (Hills come in many shapes and sizes, so don't worry.) Then leave it to dry.

When the water evaporates, you are left with a nice lump of hill. Then paint it to your satisfaction.

• Books
• Colored Paper

Well, being a college student, I've found that if you can't get any money back for your old text books (and this happens to me all the time), you could wrap them in some sort of paper and use them to simulate hills.

This gives you a sharp line you can talk about rather than using some sort of sloping thing that'll have you arguing with your opponent over whether or not your guy is on a hill, etc.

After putting down magazines and books in various places of the table top, lay down a big sheet of green felt. Voila - instant elevations. Then procede to place your other terrain (i.e. felt, lichen -- just watch at the slopes that it doesn't roll down hill).

• styrofoam
• coping saw
• sandpaper
• spray paint
• green flocking (optional)

1. Obtain any type of styrofoam (if it's too thin, glue pieces together to make it thicker).
2. Cut out hill shapes with a coping saw.
3. Use sandpaper to smooth out the edges.
4. Spray paint the whole thing green.

If you want more realism, heavily paint the hill brown and while the paint is wet, coat it with green flocking. Flocking can be found at your local railroad model shop - a common brandname is Woodland Scenics. Get the big bag that says it's a grass mix (a mixtures of green and yellow flock) - it should last you forever (unless you're a slob and spill it all over). Excess flock should be caught on the newspaper you have underneath your hill when you are painting it, and can be reused (I transfer my flocking to plastic containers).

Absolute terrain freaks will go to the ultimate step of using, say, 4 foot by 2 foot styrofoam boards and actually carving rivers and roads into the surface, gluing hills and ridges and trees and buildings and flocking the whole thing. Then the boards are butted against each other to form realistic diorama-quality terrain.

I've had problems with individual styrofoam beads popping off with wear and tear. I usually coat terrain with texture paint or watered down white glue. This gives the polystyrene a hard shell and reduces "bead moulting."

• spray can of styrofoam
• newspaper
• base material
• paint

I ran across a pretty neat item at Michael's craft store the other day and thought I would share it with everyone. It is called Form - it. It looks like a whipped-cream spray can, and the stuff that comes out resembles whipped cream. You can use it to make mountains and rocks.

1. Make a basic shape with old newspaper, and tape it to a base.
2. Spray the foam over the paper. In 8 hours it dries very hard, but stays very lightweight.
3. When dry, cut, sand and paint.