More desert-ish themed 3D printed terrain today. We are revisiting the Hextech Free Sample Pack (Battletech Compatable) More specifically, the sample hill pieces. As I often do with these things, I printed each of the sample pieces twice, one regular and one mirrored – except for the one I accidently printed three times! Unless I missed one? or two? There are six sample pieces listed in the download.

Once printed, these sat for literally months while I procrastinated on how to paint them before using Season of Scenery as the motivation to get them done and out of the way. These sculpts are samples from four different ranges of hills sold by Hextech – in the end I just went for a uniform desert look to get them done. If I ever really, truly NEED more battletech hills, but painted for a temperate theme then I can always go through the process of printing and painting a new set(!)

The painting process was pretty simple – cover in Vallejo (or was it AK?) Sandy Desert paste, then paint in slightly-thinned Sepia Vallejo Model Wash Dip. Let that disgusting stuff dry. Drybrush the hell out of them with a sand colour, then drybrush the tops of the mesas in a lighter sand. Once dry, I went outside and played with adding pigments to them in various ratios, then sprayed them in a Matte that ended up much more satin to seal it all in and tone the pigments in. I still think they turned out pretty decently.

Here’s a quick light box shot, so you can see the final colours a little better.

As you can see, they work well enough for a “desert mesa” look, despite the hex pattern – and it also seems I’ve gotten enough stuff done in September for a simple desert table suitable for battletech and no-building Imperialis. Let’s check that.

They work fine as smaller elements for a “skirmish” sized 40k/Combat Patrol game – though you would also want some larger LOS blocking elements as well.

The little collection does appear to work ok for something like Marvel Crisis Protocol, especially if they were spread out a little more as MCP game tables often appear to be. A battle in the Wasteland we saw in Deadpool vs Wolverine perhaps?

So yeah, these Hextech STLs are pretty good, I think. I may have to pick up some of the paid packs in future – especially if I enjoy Alpha Strike enough to dive into “Proper” Battletech using hex maps and height levels. And yes – this is another 11 pieces of terrain towards Dave Stone’s Season of Scenery ’25 – Extended Edition.