Creating customisable hilly terrain

[Justin Swanton]

Here’s how I do hills for Optio, but this can apply to any ruleset. I needed the following:

1. Non-adhesive magnetic sheets, the kind you use for vehicle signage and the like. Quite cheap and widely available
2. Ferrite magnets. These are dirt cheap and also widely available
3. Printed cloth. This costs a bit more but once you’ve got it you’ve got it. I got mine from SG Branding, a printing company that specialises in point of sale stuff like banners and printed tablecloths. Or you can just use a painted sheet. But nothing too thick. Felt is no use.
4. Cardboard. Reasonably thick and sturdy.

The magnet sheets are trimmed to accommodate the printed battlefield cloth. I have two to vary the depth of the battlefield (I have two cloths).

 

Put the printed cloth on top.

With the carboard I made 4 basic hill segments, each the size of a battlefield square. Here is a hilltop:

The side of a hill:

The corner of a hill:

And what I call an inverted corner:

Next the ferrite magnets:

 

I use them in 2’s for more strength:

They are used to join the segments together. This is a bit fussy and I suspect not strictly necessary. I’ll try the next game without them.

 

 

 

The completed hill. You can see where the inverted corners come into the picture:

Next slide the cloth over the hill. For now it’s all creasy and messy:

I had made several rounded sheet magnet sections with the printed cloth glued on top:

The smaller sections smooth out the creases around the hill and fix it in place:

 

The larger sections and some small sections are used to stretch the corners of the cloth and get rid of most remaining creasing. And voila!

https://wargamingwithoutdice.blogspot.com/

[Andrew Beasley]

Reminds me a little of the Hexon hills from Kalistra but you smooth the look by hiding it under the cloth which works way better.

I have found over the years of sitting in storage my magnetic sheets have lost their ‘pull’ – I’ll leave it to you to imagine the shock when I found my figures loose in the box 🙁

I have small traditional magnets older and still viable (for weapon changes) so it must be the material mix that weakens over time rather than storage conditions.

[Justin Swanton]

Admittedly the hexon hills do look pretty. Re magnetic sheeting I suppose you can just replace the stuff from time to time. It’s not expensive, just R199 in S.A. for 610 x 1000mm which equates to £8,34 in the UK though I imagine they cost more there.

https://wargamingwithoutdice.blogspot.com/

[Darkest Star Games]

That really does work well.  Looks good, and keeps the squares quite nicely and able to tell where the slopes really are.  I’m guessing more tiers would be way more complicated due to how the matt would skew the squares?

"I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

[Justin Swanton]

That really does work well. Looks good, and keeps the squares quite nicely and able to tell where the slopes really are. I’m guessing more tiers would be way more complicated due to how the matt would skew the squares?

I tried two tiers once and it worked fine. The only limit is how far the cloth will stretch with magnetic sections to hold it down the the magnetic sheeting beneath. If you have stretchy cloth I imagine three tiers would work, or perhaps just bigger hill sections.

https://wargamingwithoutdice.blogspot.com/

[Andrew Beasley]

Justin Swanton wrote:

Admittedly the hexon hills do look pretty. Re magnetic sheeting I suppose you can just replace the stuff from time to time. It’s not expensive, just R199 in S.A. for 610 x 1000mm which equates to £8,34 in the UK though I imagine they cost more there.

I have very mixed feelings over the Hexon bits – love the basic hexes, could live with the hassle of flipping them over and filling for rivers, dislike the hills and loathe the vac form pieces… Every few years I visit their stand and hum and har, buy a couple of shapes to try in a skirmish game or mainly walk away empty handed. Been going on for years and years and years 🙂

Compared to the cost of the figures replacing the sheet is not bad but I had stuck it down to a plastic box and it came up in little flecks and left the glue behind. Worse, I used it on the bases of the figures so need to strip them down as well if I’m to replace them.

I did wonder if it was the heat – they had been up in the roof so hot for the UK but not other places…

[Cacique Caribe]

This is looking great!

Dan
Loads of WIPs: https://www.flickr.com/photos/9593487@N07/albums/with/72157710630529376

[Justin Swanton]

Here’s hilly terrain for one of my Optio games using customisable hill segments (the city walls are customisable too):

You can create any shaped or sized contour terrain you please.

https://wargamingwithoutdice.blogspot.com/

[Justin Swanton]

For anyone interested, here is a pdf template of the hill segments. You can resize the segments as you please.

https://wargamingwithoutdice.blogspot.com/

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