I've finished painting my first rocky outcropping, but in the pic below the paint is a little damp and there is a bit of shine...I'll let it dry overnight and give it a coat of spray matt varnish tomorrow and it will then look the same as the hills.
I've also decided on how I will do roads and probably a river, too. I'll use the same image that I did for the gaming mat itself, and in Photoshop, I'll cut out a single 2' x 2' section and place over the top of that image, road and river sections...straights, bends and intersections...and then get 2 or 3 of those printed and shipped to me, and when it arrives I'll use a steel ruler and a heap of fresh blades for my knife and cut the sections out. This way, they'll be made of the exact same material as the mat, with the exact same colouring as the mat, with the exact same hex sizes as the mat, so will suit perfectly...and the thickness of these roads and rivers will be 2mm, which is the same thickness as the laser cut black acrylic bases for my Mechs and other units, as well as the tree bases and the bases for the buildings and rocky outcroppings...so it should all fit in well together.
Can't decide between sealed or unsealed roads though...this planet is a backwater planet, and has little infrastructure and no large civilian presence, so probably unsealed I guess.
I've also started painting another building. This is a sensor and turret control tower. I also have a few turrets that I am going to paint up after I finish getting the tower and generator looking how I like.
This will give me a small building package of;
1 x Sensor and turret control tower,
4 x Turrets
1 x Fusion power generator to power the tower and turrets.
I've decided my next rocky outcropping will be about Level 5 or 6, and it will have a cave entrance.
For my first games with all this new terrain, I want to do a two-part scenario, where an attacking Mech force is aiding a larger Infantry force to carry out a raid upon an enemy underground facility.
Both players choose a Lance of 4 x Mechs with the Attacker having a +15% BV allowance over the Defender.
All battle damage carries over from Part 1 to Part 2.
The attacker's Infantry force is story only, no need to choose any Infantry for the game.
Part 1Attacker - has a full Lance of Mechs and must neutralise the facility defences to open the way for the Infantry force to enter the underground facility through the cave entrance to kill or capture enemy military and civilian staff, and to gather intelligence from the facility before destroying it.
Defender - has 2 x Mechs and 4 x Turrets and must defend the facility from the attacking Mechs (the other 2 x Mechs from this Lance are currently out on patrol).
Attacking Mechs will be operating under forced withdrawal, defending Mechs will not.
Turrets can be neutralised by either destroying the turrets themselves, or destroying either the tower or generator (both are hardened targets).
Part 2Attackers successful in Part 1 - the Infantry force is now fighting through the labyrinth of tunnels and rooms in the underground facility carrying out their raid, and the remaining attacking Mechs topside, must now defend against a counter-attack by the 2 x Mechs returning at speed from their patrol after receiving an enemy contact communication from the defending Mechs under attack.
Attackers failed in Part 1 - the remainder of the attacking Lance must carry out a fighting withdrawal across the board (on a new board set up, which is North of the facility), the remainder of the full Lance of defending Mechs start on the edge of the map and attacking Mechs start 10 hexes in front of the following defenders...at least 1 Attacking Mech must make it off the opposite board edge.
That's the sketched out skeleton of the scenario anyway...no doubt it will change some when I start putting it down on paper.