New Hex Terrain

 

I spent the day working on some new terrain boards - which wasn't what I planned at all.  I've been thinking about some form of hex terrain which will let me represent different levels of hills in a satisfactory way.

I have always liked this picture from Battle Magazine of a Spanish wargamer's setup and was deeply envious as a teenager of his wargames room...

So, armed with Sketchup and my laser cutter I played around with 2" hexes and produced some Hexon shaped tiles which I quickly realised were too small so made tiles four times as big.  Unfortunately, I hadn't studied Hexon closely enough and didn't make the tile in the same shape as 4 hexon tiles tesselated, but after I'd cut 5 of them this morning I realised and redesigned the tile so it tesselates properly with a 6-hex tile.

The basic big tile is this:

I had a go at flocking a small tile (and painting the edges grass green) and the hexes virtually disappear but can still be seen for alignment.

I have cut enough for nearly 4' square now and started playing with hills.

This is how I visualise the hills working - as double height pieces.  Either with 2 x 4mm MDF glued together or simply with plain (but edge painted) pieces underneath.

 

 

Bavarians at the bottom of a very steep hill...

 

 

Now I just need to flock a load of tiles and work out a frame to hold them in place.

I will probably just use my standard roads and stream at the moment as I am not planning on using the hexes for movement but might go to sunken stream tiles later on.

Looking at the original photo he has 5 levels of hills so I need quite a lot more tiles!