Next up on the Ligny project are the hills. Using my hex grid, the hills needed to be about 4 inches square and varied from a single hex to two areas of multiple hexes.
First, I cut some 1" foam into the appropriate sizes, opting to run the multi-hex hills together into larger pieces. I used my foam cutter to bevel the edges, and then sanded the edges to round them off a bit. But the more I looked at them, the more I didn't like the look on the table. They seemed oversized for the scale and made everything look crowded. I also don't like the "mesa" look these hills can give a game.
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| Is that a pimple? Oh, no, just a hill. Ultimately, I didn't like the looks of these and relegated them to the regular terrain pile. |
So what now? I thought maybe using much thinner foam (1/8" instead of 1" ) might look better. I also decided that for ease of play -- remember this is a super-sized Commands and Colors game, so everything is on a hex grid for movement and fire -- I would just make the hills in hex shapes. I found a template of a 4" hex (the size of my grid) online and printed out several copies on cardstock, taped them together, traced them, then cut them out using my foam cutter.
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| The larger area of "hills". |
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| And the smaller one. The tower has not yet been converted to the windmill. The proximity of the hills to it is what made me dislike the 1" hills -- too crowded and didn't look right. |
I took the single-hex hill and gave it a base coat of tan, then added a lot of coarser flock to make it stand out compared to the finer texture of my gaming mat. I figured I should use the smallest piece as my test in case it didn't work out.
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| The finished test piece. I liked the way it looked, so started on the larger area. |
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| The base coat of tan is followed by dark green flock around the edges. |
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| Then it got a coat of diluted white glue for the rest of the flock. |
When everything was dry, I put them on the board. I was satisfied with the look. They don't have the massive elevation the other hills have, but blend into the board much better. You can argue they don't look like hills, though they are slightly elevated, but they work. They probably look more like overgrown areas, but I'm they were the best alternative. It's obvious it's a different type of terrain, will be easy to see which hex a unit is in and I don't have giant mesas all over my battlefield.
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| The large hilly area in place. |
I suppose I could have tried adding an illusion of a rise by using lighter colored flock in an arc around several faces of the hex, but usually when I try to get that artistic, it ends up being an epic fail because I just don't have the artistic eye to pull off that level of detail.
I also finished the windmill and the village bases for this project. Other than putting the forest down -- and there are only a couple of hexes worth, I believe I'm ready to deploy the troops.
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