Nothing to do with the actual battle of Pork Chop Hill, i just liked the idea of calling a post that. But it does have everything to do with hills, and the construction of one. In the good old days (for me that’s the early 1980’s when Adam and the Ants and Duran Duran were wearing frilly shirts) my hills were books placed under random green blankets. These days my green mat is a massive improvement on the old blanket or the green painted ping pong table. But its too rigid to place items under it to create any hills or undulations on my wargaming table. After plenty of research and investigation i decided to have a go at constructing my own hills. This method is nothing new and all sorts of tutorials can be found on the net, but for a balance between value, visual effect and simplicity of construction i don’t think you can beat it!

I bought some polystyrene sheets 25mm thick from my art shop for a couple of bucks, plus some 3mm MDF from Bunnings, again a very cheap material. I cut out my required shape from the MDF, in this case just a simple oval shape. I then glued the polystyrene sheet to the MDF shape with PVA glue and left it weighted down overnight to dry. I reckon you can use any kind of polystyrene or insulation foam or similar. Once it was dry i cut the hill edge level with the MDF base, and then gave it a good sand with sandpaper until the contours were where i wanted them. Make sure you sand this stuff outside so you don’t inhale any nasties. That’s pretty much it. I gave the hill a thick coat of a cheap dark brown acrylic paint and then gave it a liberal coating of green flock. The flock i had is a close enough match to my green mat, well good enough for me anyway. I was pretty happy how the whole thing came out. Now i can make a bunch more of different shapes and heights to cover all situations. I am also going to make a big hill in two halves so it can be one big hill or two smaller ones that sit flush with the edge of the table. I also think grabbing some cork from the pet store and making a hill with a cliff will be a cool idea.

Check out the naked hill below and then the finished result!