Making for the Hills...

...or rather, making the hills.

Two more hills have been added to my mix of heights. 

The first is a long-ish, low ridge, measuring 600mm long and varying between 200mm and 250mm wide, with a height of around 20mm.

The second is a steeper, more rugged height that is 450mm on the long, around 300mm on the short long axis and about 30mm high. Steep on one face with a rocky outcropping on one end and various areas of erosion across the rest, but with a more gentle approach on the opposite face. 

When I started the terrain tile project one of the options was to make tiles with hills built into them, but on analysis it introduced a multitude of problems:

• My tiles are only 300mm x 300mm so the size and shape of heights is restricted, unless I was to make tiles that joined with others, but that would have created a complex number of tiles.
• Then what if I wanted a road or a stream beside the hill, this would increase that complexity and number of  tiles again
• Storage becomes more complex because the tiles as as they are can stack on top of one another without damaging them, whereas as a hill tile would have odd shape and would stack awkwardly and would damage easily.

Having hills that sit on top of the tiles seemed to be the simplest way around the problem with no more than a dozen hills in different shapes. It also solved another problem for me. I have always liked that way that terrain tiles give the option to sculpt terrain below the surface: to have rivers and streams with real banks, to have sunken roads and dips in the ground, but what has always ruined the aesthetic for me is the checkerboard effect that tiles can create. Placing items like hills, woods, buildings, fields, etc on top of the tiles helps to cover and disguise the joins, as shown here.

The checkerboard effect

The checkerboard effect minimised with a wood, a field and two hills

That checkerboard effect is made worse in my case because I have made them super light - a standard tile weighs less than 200 grams (7 oz) - so in play they are going to get knocked and will move around easily and create the gaps that will offend my eye. My initial solution was to use rare earth magnets to hold the tiles together, but it meant buying some 300 magnets and initial tests did not go all that well. The answer for me was to build an adjustable edge that could be attached to my table that would lock them in place.

So I made plans to build this edge, an edge that would not only lock the tiles in place but would also extend my table on both axies to turn my 1525mm x 2740mm table tennis table into a 1800mm x 3000mm table. I bought all the MDF sheeting I need prior to Christmas and the plan was to complete the work before my return to work on 3 January. This was to be my main summer project. But alas my plans were thwarted by my medical problem earlier this month which prevents me from anything too strenuous for the next couple of months. The MDF sheeting itself is not all that heavy, but it is awkward to handle and since I lack a workshop the cutting of the MDF has to be done outdoors (otherwise there is likely to be a severe amount bleating about MDF sawdust in the garage from Domestic Control) which would mean carrying the MDF out the side door of the garage, down a narrow path, past the washing line to an area where the saw horses can be set up. Frustratingly this awkward manoeuvring makes the task impossible in my current condition. 

And this, dear reader, is why hills, and a few other items, will feature heavily on these pages over the next month.