Wargame terrain hills, part one

I'll be running a tutorial session for the next couple of posts, mainly to motivate myself to complete the project in front of me but also perhaps to motivate others to embark on similar projects of their own. The hobby project for this week, instead of painting miniatures, is to build some suitable terrain for the gaming table. I haven't done much of that, as it really isn't my favorite part of the hobby, but I still love the look of new terrain pieces, as it adds so much to the atmosphere of the games. I'll be building the hills for my table to begin with, as they're one of the most essential parts of a war-game landscape, for artillery to take aim from and for troops to move around.

For this project, you'll need polystyrene*, hardboard**, wood glue, sand, paint, flock, knife, sandpaper and a marker pen.

• Take the polystyrene and draw the shapes of the hills with the marker pen. For Warhammer Fantasy, you'll want the hills to be quite open with slopes fairly easy to recognize for gaming purposes.
  
  
• Cut out the shapes of polystyrene with the knife and place them on the hardboard, then draw the same hill shapes on the board and cut them out as well.
  
  
• If you'd like a stepped hill, first cut out the highest point of the hill from the polystyrene, then fit that against a larger piece for the lower ground, before drawing out the shape of larger form on the hardboard.
  
  
• Glue the polystyrene shapes onto the hardboard pieces and leave to dry.
  
  

This is how the first stage looked for me:


 * You can find polystyrene in most local hardware stores as well as in the package shipments you'll receive from product companies. For more advanced cutting, you'd want blue or pink Styrofoam since it won't crumble as much. For this project though, as I won't do much delicate cutting, I'm using cheap white polystyrene.

** Some people prefer to use thincard instead of hardboard because it's so much easier to cut out the shapes from. However, it's more prone to warping and it makes the entire structure less sturdy. I prefer to use hardwood for that reason, even though it takes much longer to cut.