Good morning all, posting early today as it doesn't look like I will get up into the attic today - Mrs P has got her busy head on. So here is what I have done so far on this project:-
After the game using the Amon Hen terrain I decided two things:
1. This particular set of terrain needs more rough ground and trees. In fact this is true for pretty much most of Middle Earth, because with Gondor sitting in splendid isolation, the Dwarves and Elves sitting sulking in their little enclaves, the place is pretty much going to seed. Nobody is tidying the place up, certainly not the orcs, it is overgrown and going back to nature.
2. Our club trees are in a
very sorry state.
I don't know about others but trees and stuff like that, are things wargamers want on their wargames tables but with so many other 'shiny things' about they don't always get the attention they deserve.
Our club has a box of 'trees', but sadly, through years of neglect, they mostly look like this.
Trees without bases, trees with oddly shaped bases or just scraps of stuff that might be a tree if it was upright.
So the plan is to base up all the trees in the club box in a uniform way.
In the process as well, I am going to create some forest bases - scenery features which will define areas that say "
this is woodland/forest - cover, rough ground, obscuring terrain etc etc and etc."
If you just plonk two or three trees down and say my unit of Ents is lurking in Fangorn forest, your opponent may turn around and ask where the edge of the forest is so that they can avoid it.
This actually happened once, not in one of my games but I was present when it happened.
The orc player was told "that is Fangorn Forest", pointing at a wooded area down one side of the board.
"Okay", he says, and promptly marches three units of orcs right through the middle of it as a short-cut.
It did not end well. IIRC
three orcs out of 30+ made it out. Hugely funny, but not if you were an an orc.So what we're aiming for is a terrain feature that says
woodland, with a few trees on, and some bushes and fallen trees and so on.
Like this but with trees.
I may even throw some ruined walls into the mix.
I began by experimenting.
I wanted something like this, that I created for the Amon Hen statues.
The holes/slots are really there as indicators that that is where tree go/are, but you will be able to remove the trees for storage and also so that you can place troops/tanks/mechs whatever on those bases as well.
I have a lot of these.
They're wooden discs. I buy them from a UK high street shop called
The Works. I have no idea what other people use them for, but I use them mainly for figure bases as you wil have seen in the Musketeers thread. There are 20mm discs, 30mm and these, which are - I think - 40mm. So they would do nicely for the bases for the trees themselves.
Now this is where the experimenting comes in, trying to work out how to make the places where the trees will go in a way that is relatively simple, quick, inexpensive and above all, durable.
After some thought I turned to
It's one of those 3D pen things. I picked it up in
Lidl for under 20GBP, and I have seen people do incredible things with them. Me? All I wanted was to make a ring to place the tree bases in.
First attempts went well,
They're pliable, tough, and flexible, and it doesn't take much more than a quick go round with a Dremel sanding head, and they're exactly what I was looking for.
They hold the tree base in place but not so tightly that they can't easily be placed in and taken away.
On to basing the tree themselves.
I could have done this by mixing up some miliput, and jabbing the tree into it and letting it set. My hot glue gun is out on loan, so I thought I would try some other methods. I will probably use Miliput more for the main batch.
Using the 3D pen to hold the tree down, I created a mound of filament, and pushed the tree into it. That didn't work very well, so I glued the tree in place using superglue and baking soda. I used variations on the super glue thing for the rest of the trees in the pictures.
This is going nicely so far.
The next task is basing up the remaining trees, finishing the bases in the same manner as the Middle earth terrain. Then the filament frames need glueing down to card, and and then they need landscaping too.
Anyway Mrs P wants me to take her out for some stuff, so I hope you all stay safe and well, and have an good day.
Pickers.