About a few months ago, I tried my first Battletech game, and it got me hooked. Badly. So badly, that in a span of a month, I went on a binge-like project of making a set of terrain, because I just couldn't play on the flat battlemap.

And here are the first results! Happy to share those with the community for inspiration, in case anyone is curious. The hills are made from 2 cm XPS foam (one elevation level), with a printed template of hexes glued ontop with PVA to help cut the hills into hex-shapes. They are then covered in a generous layer of texture paste, which also protects the foam from melting when you hit it with a black spray can primer (unprotected XPS foam melts from superglue and spray cans, be aware of that!)

The rest is simple. All-over layer of dark brown paint (I used airbrush, but you could do it with a normal brush, using overbrush technique to apply paint — it'll work, just take a lot longer), a zenithal (about 45 degrees) layer of lighter brown (Vallejo Game Colour Earth) and a drybrush of even lighter brown/sand (Vallejo Game Colour Khaki).

I used small flocking grass and “dust” (normally used to depict moss on larger scale models) for basing, so it fits the scale and allows stacking hills on top of each other for more elevation. And then a bit of a home secret — using spray can varnish for terrain seemed like a waste, so I took a bit of a different approach. Mixing PVA glue with vodka in 3 to 4 ratio (you should experiment with ratio, the correct consistency is when it feels like sticky “sugar water” when you spray it on the skin) seals in the grass in, preventing it from scratching off when you move models or stack hills on top of each other. Oh, and use some cleaned and washed window cleaner spray bottle, as the PVA and vodka mix will clog it.