How to Make Some Simple Hills

I feel like you guys already would know all this stuff but I am so pleased with the new hills I made for the Little Bighorn game that I wanted to post a short tutorial. It is really easier than it seems.

Materials:

• 2x8 sheet of 1" styrofoam, Home Depot/Rona, cost ~$10
• Sharpie. You have one of these already
• USB Hot Wire Foam Cutter. I use the FloraCraft CleanKut. Got it at Michael's, $30
• Sand
• Paint. If you can, grab a pint pot of mistinted paint at the paint counter. Otherwise, have some latex paint mixed up in a ground colour. Don't use craft or model paint, you will need too much of it
• Sanding sponges - medium texture. ~$8 for three. Get washable/reusable ones. You will be doing a lot of sanding
• White school glue

First, draw out the shapes of your hills on the styrofoam with your Sharpie. Next, cut out the shapes with your hot wire foam cutter - but angle the wire outwards from your lines as much as you can manage, like 45 degrees. This will give you a start to the "slope" on the hillsides. Cut slowly and let the cutter do the work while you inhale the fragrant fumes of atomized styrofoam. If you're using a USB cutter and it's not working well, try a different plugin adapter as some are more powerful than others.

Once you've got the shape cut out it's time to start sanding. You want to round off the edge contour between the hillside and hilltop to make it natural-looking, and smooth out the hillside itself. When the sponge starts to get less effective, switch to a new one. The styrofoam dust will clog up the sponges but you can wash them.

When you have the hill contoured in a pleasing way it's time to start painting. On mine I laid down a basecoat of the latex ground-coloured paint. Then I brushed over white glue thinned with water and lightly sprinkled the sand over top. After the glue has dried (it can take a long time if it's thinned) put another coat of thinned glue over top. Then paint again, or not, and drybrush, or not, and apply flock or static grass, or not, all according to your taste.

Lastly, have a game with your fantastic new hills!

Here are the hills cut out of styrofoam and shaped.

Hills after basecoat of paint with sand applied over thinned white glue.

More thinned white glue gets put over top to seal down the sand.

Hills laid out on the Little Bighorn terrain.

Hills after painting over the sand, with flock and static grass applied.

Finished hill.

Ready for the last stand on Custer Hill.

Hills laid out on the finalized terrain.

The battle is on Sunday - hoka hey!