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#17421
Avatar photoMr. Average
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Wellp.  The bad news: I have never quite worked out what is going on geometrically with the TerrainMaker tiles I’ve been assembling.  The good news: I did determine that it might be possible to mount the hexes on felt backing which, when put on a felt mat underlay, will keep them more or less in place, by friction.  The process is an involved one, though, and while working it through, I was overtaken by events, to wit:

A very (very) generous person gave me a Kallistra Hexon-II set.  Do I feel like a sell-out, now?  Maybe a little.  But I have to admit, the Hexon material is pretty superb, and the boards and overlays are an excellent fit.  My set is a single box of the board material, a selection of hills and escarpments roughly equivalent to what I had been preparing for the TerrainMaker set.  Also, I got a large set of single-hex rivers, for the “natural,” kinky look I prefer over the straight-line rivers more often seen, and a pile of overlay pieces, which seem to be laser or machine-cut out of 2mm plastic or composite, and will be used for roads, forests, towns, fields, and such and such.  So the flavor of this project remains very much the same: the goal is modular, versatile terrain for 2-3mm scale, and the set is going to be somewhat nearly identical to the GHQ skirmish board.  According to Kallistra, the composite they made this out of can be painted and glued with PVA glues; I’m not sure what the material is but it looks like sheet styrene to me, so I’ll just have to test it a little, follow instructions, and see what I can make of it.

Pros: the pieces are precision made and fit perfectly.  The boards are of sufficient weight that they stay in place quite well, and clip together from behind.  Each hex is identical in size to a TerrainMaker hex, so there’s a smooth conversion.  The cons are mainly the cost and difficulty of getting them from the UK to the United States, which was less of a concern this time, but might become so if I expand the set later.  But that’s later.  Right now, I have to say that, this being a Christmas gift, it’s about as spectacular as a modest hobbyist like myself has any right to expect.  And it seems that the techniques and tactics I’ve been using on TerrainMaker material will apply here very well, and so the learning process from the project up to now should be exceptionally valuable.  I’m quite looking forward to it, I have to say.  Pictures, as I go, of course!