Wargaming terrain – DIY and Hexon
Hexon terrain boards from kallistra are considered prime quality and this comes with the associated costs. Since I’ve started miniatures gaming, I’ve been very budget wise and have tried several terrain solutions.
DIY
My first DIY attempts were rollable mats using acrylic canvas that I textured with paint+speckle where I applied material (dried used coffee grinds, sand, flock) for a realistic look. I should have been more careful when removing the canvas from the frame afterwards (got them framed so that it doesn’t warp when drying) because I had some rough cuts on the canvas sides. My main concern here is that because it’s stored rolled, when unrolling it, it retains it’s rolled shaped, (which is also a problem with my commercial battle mat rolls) and also due to the constant rolling/unrolling it’s prone to constant shedding.
Next, I’ve made terrain tiles out of acrylic canvas tiles from the dollar store. These worked okayish but were prone to warping which I didn’t take into account when preparing them. I had heavily diluted my PVA glue when gluing my dried used coffee grinds texture material which made things worse. I’ve taken out most of the warping afterwards. I’ve touched them up with static grass later to improve their look. I did a fresh batch of 3 more tiles recently using undiluted PVA to apply sand and flock as texturing and it worked better, but still if I had used the technique I used in my Hexon boards (read further down) it would have been even better. My mistake here was that I applied PVA in the spots I wanted sand, and then applied PVA in the spots I wanted grass. That was tough to handle and I missed many spots and had to touch it up with a spray of diluted PVA which… caused minor warping.
Afterwards, I made tiles with foamcore. I cut foamcore into 20×20 cm square tiles so that I can have a ~2×2′ table using 9 tiles, and they are the same size of my acrylic canvas tiles. I got a grass paper mat which I cut to shape for the tiles and glued it on them with universal glue so that I avoid warping. I went above and beyond here by making various terrain features such as a small hill and uneven terrain, ponds, and a road. I even used magnets so that they lock together. My main issue here was twofold. First, handling foamcore is a pain. It’s tough to cut and I even tried a mix of modelling knife and hot wire cutter. Second, cutting perfect square shapes is hard, and I was missing the right tools, such as a metal corner like the ones the woodcutters use, and a cutting surface. Needless to say I spent way to long on these and there’s some minor gaps where four tiles intersect. The paper grass mat was a correct choice though, as it saved me a lot of time, and it was easy to remove grass from it with a bit of water, to create paths and ponds.
Hexon
Finally I decided to splurge and go with the Hexon solution that I was eyeing for so long. BREXIT doesn’t help here. I’m located in the EU and there’s unforeseen customs costs, VAT and handling. I had to be extra careful with my order because if you go over a certain weight, then kallistra can’t ship with the Royal Air Mail, but uses a courier service. Courier services have even more pronounced customs handling fees, and I wanted to avoid this. Also VAT is applied on the shipping cost as well, which means that going overboard would extrapolate everything.
Having these on my mind I was trying to decide what’s best for me. Buy hexon boards or non-hexon terrain features. I went with the first option. Then I had to decide if I’d go for sloped hexes or just terrain features. I decided not to get sloped hexes as the extra boards needed would increase the weight by a lot. Then I had to decide if I’d buy preflocked or not. The reviews said that kallistra does an excellent job of flocking, but I finally went with the bare brown plastic solution that I’ll flock myself, which meant I’d get more things, but still had to make sure I was not overweight.
So I got me 6 boards which would make a good 2×2′ table, a 3-tile hill, a 3-tile escarpment, a 2-tile hill, a 2-tile rocky outcrop, 4 single tile rocky outcrops, 4 single tile craters, and a 3-tile lake. Given the modularity of the hex tile system this should give me plenty of options to work with.
When the package arrived, I was thrilled. Of course VAT and handling was like 30% of the price+shipping, so the final price considering shipping was almost double the price of the goods. Yikes.
The quality though is unparalleled. Sturdy brown plastic material. The boards are stackable and they’re designed so that they only touch in the corners, so your flocking material won’t be harmed while stacking. The boards have clips to keep them together, but I don’t thing they are needed as they almost slot together. The terrain features fit on the hexes of the boards so that they don’t move around. Overall it’s well worth the cost to me.
So I went ahead and flocked them. I followed the How to guides in the kallistra website. I was really curious about the “glue PVA in one go, apply everything in layers”. Had to get me some disposable trays, but everything worked out fine in the end. A lesson learned it not to overdo it with PVA because it will drip at cliffsides and also puddle at other places creating bald or shiny spots. But this was only minor, and I may or may not touch them up in the future. The end result was well worth it, and I really love what I ended up with.
Another thing I love about the hexes is that they define areas. So I could get single based trees and shrubs, and consider that the entire hex is an area with that kind of terrain. There’s also the option to buy single hex tiles-bases that you put on top of hexes and you can have them ready with trees and shrubs and rocks but I find this potentially limiting.
I am thinking of getting more of these in the future, to make some desert and/or snow terrain. Maybe even badlands or dark forest. But that’s more of a wishlist right now.
Lessons learned
If I’d go DIY again, I’d go for a paper grass mat solution over acrylic canvas tiles, that id flock the sides so that the ends of the paper grass mat aren’t visible, but if I’d have the appropriate storage space, I’d use a paper grass mat over a big foamcore surface like 50×70 cm so that no cutting is involved.
Nevertheless as a complete solution, I think the hexon boards are the way to go. It’s like 100% better than what I have, and if you buy them bare plastic, then you get to do your own custom designs as you want. For me, that’s a definite winner.
Solo, Pen, Paper and Dice 
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