Making Quick and Inexpensive Hills

Hills play an important role in nearly every game. They provide cover and allow units to be on higher ground for bonuses and a better range of sight. They are great for your artillery pieces and your Epic pieces to make popup attacks from behind.

They are very easy to make!

What you need

Foam - an old fruit box is perfect
Water based paint - cheap kids stuff is great
Modelling knife
or special foam cutter from games-workshop (easier but not needed)
Flock
PVA or craft glue

Making the hill

Take a rectangular piece of foam and simply cut it into a rounded shape, a kidney shape often looks good.

Then you need to round the edges buy cutting around the edge at around 45 degrees. Don't worry about being too neat as the flock will cover up most small bumps. Give it another trim to round it a bit more and you should have a basic looking hill.

I'm sure many games have been played with similar crude looking terrain. But to make it look cool we need to add some color. Roughly paint the hill green, brown, grey, whatever - because when it is flocked the underlying color of the base will show through.

Mix up some PVA with some water, about 50/50 if good. Paint the top liberally then completely cover with flock, then you can shake off the excess. It's handy to do this in some kind of container or on a piece of newspaper and reuse the excess flock.

Anyway that's about it, very easy and looks fine on the field.

You can add variations by adding another level on top of the hill or adding rocky outcrops, trees, whatever.

For a desert theme, try using sand instead of flock.