HexLand — forest terrain experimentation.

[Fitz]

I'm trying out something I've been thinking about for a while for 6mm terrain, and that is to build it in a modular format, though without going to the lengths of building complete terrain tiles. Sculpted terrain tiles, while they can be beautiful to look at, are inherently limiting, and they're also a pain in the arse to store.

I've built some less rigidly geometrical terrain modules before: here, and here for example. I may return to that format, but I'll make a few of these hex-based ones and see how they compare in terms of playability.

I had a bunch of 50mm hexes I made many, many years ago from heavy 3mm thick card. Those were originally intended for a home-made copy of Knights of the Air (one of which, a Fokker D-II you can see to the left of frame), which did get completed but then hardly ever got played. I'll never use them again for their intended purpose, so waste not, want not. For WWI aerial gaming these days I use Canvas Eagles and 1/300 scale miniatures, mostly from Heroics & Ros.

I bevelled the edges of the card hexes on my belt sander. I was in two minds about doing that; on the plus side, it means that the hexes slope down to the table surface and will blend in better with a ground-cloth, but on the minus side, it makes them harder to pick up by the base to avoid damage to the terrain modeling.

The trees are very cheap Z-gauge railway scenery from China, some with plastic trunks, the others in twisted wire. I paid about $5 per 100 of the plastic ones, and if I recall correctly about $10 for a hundred of the wire ones. I mix the two, with the wire-trunked trees to the outside; they're stiffer and make it easier to pick up the hex, and they're a bit less regular than the plastic ones too.

[grant]

Great result!!!

[Fitz]

I finished off the hexes I have at the moment — this picture includes about a third of them — and I think I'll call them a qualified success. It's not diorama-quality terrain, but it looks OK to my eye, and it will allow for considerable flexibility in laying out woods and copses.

I have a friend with a computer-guided router/cutter, and this weekend I'll have a go at cutting some hexes and hex arrays in 3mm MDF, which will be a superior material to card, I think.

The tanks are Churchill Mk.1 from C-in-C, the figures are Heroics & Ros WWII British infantry. The buildings are a couple of simple shells that I whipped up out of light card and painted.

[pacarat]

Looks great.