Aeronautica Imperialis - Making Terrain - Hills

For me, a large part of the fun of wargaming is building the story of the battle. I always use painted miniatures. If a model is not painted, it does not get used. I also like to include terrain and scenery pieces that help create the world my miniatures are fighting in. The scenery should look good but must not get in the way of gameplay.

Aeronautica Imperialis is set in the skies above the war-torn battlefields of the forty first millennium. Because of this setting, terrain does not usually play a major role. That said, the game includes rules for ground targets, defences, and low altitude combat. I also find that the game board can sometimes look a little too flat.

To add some visual interest, I decided to build a hill. The goal was to break up the flatness of the board while keeping the hexes fully visible and usable, since they are essential for movement in the game.

Requirements:

To begin, I bought 50 wooden hexagons measuring 50 millimetres across and 3 millimetres thick from Amazon, along with a Skies of Fire paper mat from eBay.

I also gathered a few other supplies: a craft knife with a curved blade, three pieces of card, a pair of scissors, PVA glue, and a cheap brush for spreading the glue.

Process

The wooden hexagons were glued together into stacks of either 2, 4, or 6 pieces. I made one stack of 6, five stacks of 4, and twelve stacks of 2. PVA glue was used to bond the hexagons. After applying the glue, I carefully aligned each piece to ensure the sides of the stacks were smooth and even. To help the glue set firmly, I placed the stacks under a pile of books to apply steady pressure until they dried completely.

The next step was to glue the stacks together to form larger plates. I used only stacks of the same height to build each plate, and no more than three stacks were combined for any one plate. The bottom of each hexagon stack was coated with PVA glue, then carefully arranged on a sheet of card. I took time to tessellate the stacks accurately, ensuring they aligned neatly.

Using stacks of the same height on each card allowed me to place books on top and apply even pressure while the glue dried. The card serves an important purpose; it holds the stacks together. If you try to glue just the edges of the stacks, they tend to come apart easily. Attaching them to a card base gives the whole structure much more stability.

Once the glue had fully dried, I used a craft knife with a curved blade to carefully trim away the excess card around each plate.

The individual plates were turned upside down and glued onto another sheet of card, effectively creating a sandwich with the wooden hexagons in the middle and card on both sides. As before, I placed books on top to apply pressure while the glue dried.

Once the glue had completely dried, I used a craft knife with a curved blade to carefully trim away the excess card around each plate.

The next step was to decorate the plates. I used scissors to cut sections from the Skies of Fire paper mat, roughly matching the shape of each plate. I intentionally cut the pieces slightly larger than needed, so I could trim them precisely with a craft knife later. When gluing the paper to the plates, I took care to align the hex lines on the mat with those on the wooden hexes — this alignment is key to achieving a clean, professional finish. As before, I placed books on top of the plates to ensure even pressure while the glue dried.

Once the glue had completely dried, I used a craft knife with a curved blade to carefully trim away the excess paper and card from around the plates. In the picture below, you can just make out the edges of the paper extending beyond the plates before they were trimmed.

There we go, the individual plates can be arranged to create different shaped hills. I’m also planning to get a Wrath of Angels mat to decorate the reverse side of these hexes, giving me more variety for future games.

In most cases, these hills won’t affect gameplay at all and will function exactly like any other board hexes. However, in some games, I might assign an altitude to part of the hill, for example, treating the top as Altitude 1. This way, a Ground Defence placed on it could gain a bonus to its Effective Altitude for firing.

Overall, I just like that the hill breaks up the flatness of the board and adds a bit more character to the battlefield. 

 

More of my Aeronautica articles can be found here.

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If you have any questions you would like to ask, please put them in the comments below. Thank you for reading and 'Always watch your Six'.