-Overview Of Our Development Process -

First, thanks for taking the time to read about our development process. Hexhog Tabletops is a group of three friends who spend our hobby time creating terrain for our customers and our enjoyment. As the whole endeavor spawned from a hobby project of one of the friends many years ago, the process has had a strong focus on playabiliyt and visual apeal. Our intent is to make modular terrain that can look organic in final form and is playable in a wide range of systems. As we dabble in 40k, Warhammer, 9th Age, D&D, Infinity, Flames of War, Warmaster, Frostgrave, Star Wars Legion and Mordheim to name a few, we like to make sure our terrain works with as many as possible. Our process to do that starts with a conceptual phase where we typically sketch our a few ideas of the features we are working to develop. The next step involves proofing the geometry of the core pieces in print form before any printing, as we hve many angles and elevations to get right it is important that our pieces align at the start. We then move on to detailed sculpting and print testing. If the pieces work after sculpting we then paint and give them a play test. The rest of this blog will be sharing abou sharing some recent play testing of slopes.

-Playtesting Preparations-

As we were approaching holidays we decided to go with nice casual game of Frostgrave and we asked a fellow gamer to bring over his Printable Scenery buildings to put on top of the terrain. We really like how the density worked our with the base set up of the building filling any open areas. The scenrio decided on was one where the central building in the table would spawn undead each turn out of its wreckage.

-Gameplay and Terrian Thoughts-

The wizards where a summoner and a thermaterge. Density of the terrain was helpful for dropping off LOS spells, but the slopes really shined as they allowed the warbands to move to elevation without difficult terriain. Coupled with jump we found some well placed crossbowmen early in turn two. Good rolling evened the crossbowmen to one a side that lasted until late in the game. The move or shoot aspect and density of the terrain really made getting them into position key.

The slopes mad nice access points to hills and also to one building. Though the building at the hill only saw a small skirmish with undead the sloping ground in three different hills created a nice balance of general accessability and movement, but still disrupted LOS.

The pathways and open ground created with slopes ended up with a nice dynamic that various routes allowed arrival at the center and fight over treasure to take place. By the end of the game a massive pile of defeated models lay strewn around the thermaturge apprentice.

-Final Thoughts-

Honestly we wish we would of made the slopes sooner, they really help achieve organic look we like our hills to have and they really make the terrain dynamically playable. We also used for DnD and made for a very nice encounter. Follow us or join our Discord Channel (https://discord.gg/TjYU65Q) to get notified when we launch this release!