Terrain Tutorial: The cheapest hills

If you followed my previous blog, you know I like to keep things on a tight budget when it comes to the minis hobby. I'd rather be spending the bulk of my hobby money on minis and paints than scenery.

I've got some nice minis on the go, a great Battle Systems mat to play on... But I had no terrain. 28mm terrain is more expensive to both buy and store than 15mm stuff, so I wanted to keep it as reasonable as possible on both counts. So right back to basics: Some classic stepped hills.

Local Store-bought options were OK-ish looking and not prohibitively expensive, but I knew I could do better for cheaper. Or at least I suspected I could. The bold plan was something used in B-grade film and television since the invention of the medium: Paper mache rocks!

Ingredients to make 5 hills:

• Carboard packing from my desk light shipping box (free)
• Mod podge PVA glue (dollar store) $1.25
• Crepe streamer (dollar store) $1
• Art store budget acrylic paint ($2.50 each) $7.50
• Foam core sheet for basing $4.99
• Sand (free)

This worked better than I imagined, but I think the secret was the crepe streamer. It goes on easily and has a great texture to it. The basic technique is layering the PVA-soaked paper over the structure so it dries into a hard shell.

Cut to size, make sure there's room for a mini

Bash up the edges to get an organic look, glue together with PVA

Rip up some of the crepe streamer

Prep the area with a little diluted PVA (3:1 PVA to water)

Paint the paper into place with the diluted PVA, start at the top and use downward strokes/dabs

Build layers carefully until entire hill is covered. Use wadded up PVA soaked crepe for filler

Allow to dry thoroughly! Then coat with PVA again for good measure. Then base on Foam core.

Use sand or texture gel to blend the base in, then paint black and sloppy drybrush on the colors

Once I had painted them all with a 2-stage drybrush over black basecoat, I gave them a final coat of diluted PVA as a sealant/varnish. Hopefully this will help them survive gaming.

My first attempts used too much soaked paper and I quickly realized you can just lay the paper down dry and paint the PVA over it. It is very easy to get good effects once you get a little practice.

Wadded-up crepe paper also makes a great filler/bulker if you glob enough dilute PVA on it and then poke it around with a stick. The hill in the final image had a bit of an overhang I didn't like, and after the photo was taken I filled in the gap with wadded paper, let it dry then painted back over it. It is utterly seamless looking now.

These are every bit as useful as styrofoam hills, are very safe to make if you have concerns about toxic fumes (there are none) and look even better than hot-wire cut hills IMO.

The only tiny drawback is that using MDF for the bases would be preferable, as it would give them a lot of added weight. Having said that, light hills are easier to store so I guess it's good either way. And honestly I couldn't face hand cutting MDF terrain bases again.

And that's it! I have a lot of supplies left to make more, so the total cost decreases over time. I think I'll try some more scatter sized pieces next, with some kind of weight inside.