The Commander Series Forum

After working something approaching 150 hours in two weeks, I determined that this would be a weekend of relaxation, and so I set to the task of building my terrain for my 3mm scale FWC campaign, the First Upheaval. It was with some reluctance, naturally, that I ultimately decided against using Hexon-II tiles, mainly because, undeniably beautiful though they are, the 25-30% surcharge to ship them from the UK was simply more than I could bear.

Instead, I decided to give the foam TerrainMaker tiles from GHQ a throw, and let me say, so far, I have no regrets. They require more handling, naturally, because you have to make them yourself. But one can make tremendous progress on them inside of a weekend, and for my money, they look as good as Hexon tiles, if not better, and are superior for making rivers that look natural and curvy, and overall I'm really pleased with the progress. They are also much, much less expensive, especially if you're in the U.S. By the end of the day I expect to have some photos worth looking at, though at the moment all I have is a lot of tiles with drying paint on them, to wit:



A few thoughts to start, if you should choose to do the same thing:

1) Paint all sides of the hex, including the bottom. Do the sides and bottom before you add flocking to the top - you get better-looking tiles overall. Behr Ultra-Flat latex interior paint gives excellent coverage and can be had in touch-up pots for about $3 each. The process can be a little messy - those plastic shirt covers that come with the dry cleaning make great drop cloths.

2) A hot-element foam cutter is indispensable for making hills. This is where the TerrainMaker system really shines, because no two hills ever look alike, yet if cut with care, will all match up geomorphically. I recommend cutting the angles on the sides first, about 1/4" into the foam block, then cutting the whole thing. That way, you always end out with clean edges. However, I don't recommend this for cutting river tiles, which are only 1/4" thick and tend to deform - an X-Acto knife gives better control and more accurate results.

3) Wood glue seems to give better results than plain white glue when laminating multiple parts of a tile together. No idea why this should be, but there it is. It seems to fill gaps better.

4) Lightweight wall spackling plaster, which can be had in small tubs for touching up walls, is another essential material. It dries quickly to a consistency almost identical to the foam tiles, and so is great for sealing the edges of multi-layer tiles (rivers and hills are made by stacking tile parts and gluing them together). It's also quite durable enough for gaming, and so is useful for building up hills that cut a little short, a consistent issue on smaller hill sides. This avoids the mismatches that can sometimes occur from a slightly inaccurate cut.

5) Sealing the terrain once you've made all the hexes is easily accomplished with a spray bottle and dilute white glue, though Woodland Scenics makes a solution expressly for this purpose that works slightly better, in my limited experience - less glazed-looking in the end.

So there's the project underway. I'm actually enjoying it, which is unusual - typically, terrain building has been a necessary evil to me, but something about these tiles feels very appealing. I'll let you know how this all goes as it progresses!

Whilst I appreciate not having to cut hexes out of foam, Terrain Maker is looking pricey for having to do the rest of the work yourself?!

Mind, the cost of Hexon-II here puts me off anyway, if I was tempted.

I love the terrain maker system but as you say it does involve a lot of work to have a usable set up. I have a batch of this myself and you can do some good things with it but i found that the hexes are not cut accuratly which means that they do not always fit together properly. I spent some time trimming my stuff to try and get a better fit.

Hexon II has it's uses to but is not as flexible as terrain maker overall. Yep i have this system too as i like to use hexes to regulate movement, ranging and area effect weapons.

Unfortunatly the two system are incompatable as they are slightly different in size with TM being 4 inches across the flats and Hexon being 10cms. They just don't gell together.

Looking forward to seeing how yours turns out.

Here we have a segment of the scenic, verdant hills outside lovely Picograd, still under construction.



Here, for scale, a lone hovertank from the Earthlight Division races down the A7 highway to catch up with its platoon, on the way to the front.



I haven't had as much trouble with the cut on the hexes - either they've begun making them to a more accurate standard, or I just don't notice. It's pretty good for the money, I have to say. At $10 for a pack of 25 pre-cut hex tiles, it was worth it. Like anything, there's a startup cost involved, but adding to a set already underway is very inexpensive.

very nice how the hoover tank looks on the hex's I been wanting to try this terrain maker myself.

Posted on 24 June 2014 at 02:37:49 GMT

very nice how the hoover tank looks on the hex's I been wanting to try this terrain maker myself


vacuuming it up I suppose ?

ianS

I have a biunch of this stuff stored away in my family's basement in the States. If I could get it down here, I would definitely use it. It is beautiful, flexible and light. Also easy to store. The only downside is that it is also easy to damage. But since it is ALSo relatively easy to fix, that's not a big downside.

Those hills look good.

Yep, looks cracking! How fiddly is it to assemble for a game...

I'll let you know as soon as it's done. In fact, as a test, I'll break the whole set down and time it out for setup, game time, and breakdown. So, we'll soon see!

Mr Average....I like your style!

Good stuff, I'm interested in the time compared to terrain cloth/boards, terrain pieces and go

Further progress:

Plain, flat terrain. Very tedious. But it also forms the base for forests, which I'm prepping right now.



And the base for all of it - a GHQ Skirmish Board.



I got this on a discount over the winter. There are two more in the set, so with a bit of effort a sizable pice of terrain for the scale is quite doable. The foam base generates nice friction against the foam tiles, and keeps them from shifting too much. The plastic edging will, theoretically, keep the whole assembly in place once put together. You can see the beginnings of a river, there. I haven't quite decided how to treat the water - mmy more ambitious side wants to use model railroad plastic water, but I don't know yet - some experimentation is going to be necessary. I'm also considering some edge hexes to lock the whole thing to the sides. I think I'd make them plain black.

Also - a lesson learned: the urge when making these hexes is to paint the top surface, and then dunk the hex in a tray of flocking. Don't do this - it leaves a lot of bald spots, and causes clumping and residue in the tray. Scatter the flocking generously over the top of the hex once coated with paint, then press it gently into place, and tap off the remainder. You gt much more even coverage.

Rivers - cheap & preferably glossy poster paint for the base, dry brush up a bit lighter for contrast/faster bits, then a thin layer of thinned PVA glue for an illusion of shine & depth?

Looks really good so far!

Another lesson learned: the skirmish boards are ever so slightly smaller than a full row of hexes. Result: if you assemble the board first, you may find your hexes don't fit. You get three in the pack when you order them, and I never foresee using more than two at this scale (unless the whole brigade is in the field, when it'd be fours) but nevertheless it's quite an irritating revelation.

That is odd that they would make the boards slightly smaller. I noticed that the pictures in their catalog only show them with the hex rows going across the two foot width instead of the three foot.

How... odd.

Do they expect you to use one and one only and just hang the extra hex width off the end? Or butt them up together and do the same, losing what probably amounts to a hex width of playing area?!

Looks great! I have quite a bit of Terrain Maker tiles but have yet to do anything with them. This is great inspiration. Please keep it going, Mr. Average.

Mr. Average, would you mind telling me the dimensions that you are making the roads and ditches? I did some experimenting this weekend just to see how it goes and I think my ditches looked more like canyons for 3mm figures. I may just forget about making the ditches. Would definitely be easier, I think.

Thanks!

I make the roads 10mm wide, and I make the ditches by melting a small 1mm-wide bit with a hot-element foam knife. It's no more than 1mm deep, and I fill it with shrubberies, like you find on country roads, where they grow up because of road runoff.

It feels like a million years since I handled this project - so much nonsense in my real life has kept the project in storage in August and September, but I finally pulled it out again a week ago, and I'm roaring towards completion, at last! Forests are the order of the day for me, now. I debated individual trees, but at 3mm scale it all kind of gets too fiddly, so I opted for big foliage masses using Woodland Scenics Clump Foliage, a mix of light and dark green applied liberally with white glue. Alas, I'm on my lunch break and not in my studio, so I won't have a photo until later on, but I am personally very happy with the results. I have played on a few boards done this way by knowledgeable people, and although you might think that just placing the units on top of the tree canopy would feel weird, at the smaller scale it actually works out quite naturally, and is perfectly sufficient.

So hopefully, if I have a few loose moments in the next week or two, this may actually come to completion!

I know that real life stuff, there should be a law against it! Looking forward to seeing an update I'm in the middle of scenic'ing a new layout too.

Oo, I do like a good clump-foliage tiny forest! Look forward to the piccies. Drat that real life!

A St. Vincent Brigade Mechanized patrol advances carefully along the forest edge. Visibility is no more than one hex, this morning.

Yep, that looks the part!

Made some progress this weekend, in between other things. But it's back on the table now, and possibly nearing completion at last. I'm about to get another pack or two of the 1/2" thick hexes, to expand the options for "flat" terrain - possibly some narrower roads, half-hex edges, etc.