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Thursday, 21 November 2019 Featured post

I Hear the Camel Train a Comin' - a

Making trees Sharp Practice game in the Sudan

When it comes to terrain it seems we can never have enough trees. Nothing brought that home to me more than when I 'Go Sharp into the Desert' is a variant for
embarked on the Malaya 1942 campaign for Chain of Command. I needed jungle, a lot of jungle and that meant a lot of trees. Sharp Practice that appeared in Lard
Magazine 2021 . I've played several games
and ...

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If you follow the build for the jungle terrain at the link above you will see that most of the trees were pre-made and sourced with the force composition
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Here you can see a mix of tree types set up for one of the Malaya campaign games. Chain of Command
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Followers
It was time to make repairs and rethink what to use for foliage. What follows is a sort of double tutorial on how I made the Followers (107) Next

northern hemisphere trees with the main difference being between the two types of foliage. While these were made with
20mm in mind they are versatile enough for 28mm. After all a tall tree to a 20mm chap is a smaller tree for a 28mm man.

These particular trees are all built around the Woodland Scenics armatures which come in a variety of sizes and can be bought
from model railway suppliers.

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Don't be fooled by their two dimensional appearance when they come out of the packet. The arms of the trees can be bent into
different shapes and the trunk can be twisted to create a fully three dimension shape. Bloody Bucket campaign (13)

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Bitter experience has taught me that trees that are not mounted on a sufficiently wide base are not stable when gaming and
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have a nasty tendency to topple over at the slightest knock, so I base mine on ready-cut MDF coasters from a craft store.
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Woodland Scenics (1)

The coasters themselves are a bit too uniform for my liking and so I use my Dremel rotary tool to sand down the edges to give
them a less regular shape before adding texture. For these bases I've been using pre-coloured, ready mixed grout (an idea I
borrowed from the excellent Wargaming with Silver Whistle blog, which is full of great terrain ideas). It is easy to apply and not
only gives the uneven surface you would achieve using a filler, it has a rough textured finish much like a fine covering of sand.

Once dry they are given a base coat in a dark brown acrylic paint, then finished off with a dry brush in lighter shades.
The trunks and branches are painted before any foliage is applied. I normally use the same brown base colour as the
groundwork and then give this a number of dry brushes using various shades of grey. The bases are then flocked.

The foliage will be attached to clumps of rubberised horsehair, a material used in making furniture padding. I don't believe they
use actual horsehair any longer, so technically it is rubberised coconut fibre. For our purposes it is the same thing.
You need to be sure you cut out the shapes into rough round clumps and then pull and tease out the fibres to give them a more
natural shape. Try to avoid any unnatural looking straight edges or cubes.

The foliage is a two stage process - glue the coconut fibre to the armatures of the tree in random clumps. I use a PVA glue for
this. As the fibre has quite a natural colour I have not felt the need to paint it, but there's no reason why you couldn't at this
stage. Once the glue is dry then it is time to apply the foliage. While I use a regular PVA glue to stick the coconut fibre to the
armatures these glues will dry gloss. That doesn't matter for the first stage as the glue won't be visible, however it's a different
matter for the foliage.

My initial foliage for the trees was an excellent looking leaf product from Noch. To avoid the gloss finish of PVA glue I used
Woodland Scenics 'Scenic Glue' (S190) as this forms a good bond, but most importantly it dries matt. I applied this with a
brush.

The key with tree foliage is to avoid a solid uniform colour and so I mixed up a selection of shades of green.
Finally, to help keep all the leaves in place I applied a generous coating of hair spray. In essence these sprays are a water
based varnish and as they are designed to hold human hair in place there's no reason why it won't do the job here. You can pick
up a no-name brand very cheaply from your local supermarket (incidentally if you have as little remaining hair as I do then there
is no shame buying this yourself, after all, it couldn't possibly be for you).

I've found this an inexpensive way to produce a lot of trees and they have served me well in recent years. Here they are with
some 28mm Perry American Riflemen from their AWI range:
Here they are on a table with 20mm miniatures:

So, as we've seen these are now in a need of repair and it seemed timely to reconsider what I use for foliage if the Noch leaves
are going to have trouble staying attached.
I had acquired four tubs of Woodland Scenic's 'coarse turf' in several shades of green and had not found a use for them yet. It
dawned on me that they might work very well for this project. While the density of the original Noch leaf foliage doesn't look
too bad in these pictures the trees have taken on quite a sparse appearance to the naked eye and fail to make much impact on
the table.

As with the leaf foliage used earlier I wanted to make sure that the tree colour didn't look too uniform and unnatural. I chose to
work from a base of medium green coarse turf and become progressively lighter as I worked towards the top and outer
beaches. Instead of brushing on scenic glue, this time I sprayed Woodland Scenics scenic cement. There's quite a big
difference between 'scenic glue' and 'scenic cement' with the latter a much thinner liquid ideal for spraying. Although to be
honest I don't think the Woodland Scenics sprayer is the best. In future I will look for something that can apply the glue in a
finer mist, but for now it does the job.
With the glue sprayed on and still wet I applied the first layer of flock. While this gave good coverage, as expected the colour
was very uniform (in these pictures it looks quite bright on the trees but to the naked eye it actually looks more like the colour
as you see it in the container).
Once the glue had dried I repeated the process, but this time with light green coarse turf and only trying to apply it to the outer
and top sections of each tree.
This worked well and broke up the colour nicely giving a more natural look. In some cases this was followed with a gentle dry
brush of yellow-green paint over the top-most foliage and some of the outer leaves.

I then wanted to work on the bases and the first job was to put down a layer of flock.
When I was doing the jungle terrain build I found that using dried herbs helped create the look of fallen leaves and other natural
debris, so I decided to repeat the process here but a little more sparingly than I had done with the jungle. Again, to break up the
colours I mixed different herbs together.

Using a brush scenic cement was applied randomly to the base and the dried herbs sprinkled over it.
Lastly the whole tree and base were given a spray of scenic cement to help lock everything in place.
I'm pleased with the way the course turf has worked as foliage and equally pleased to have found a use for it. With several tree
armatures, a quantity of rubberised fibre and some coarse turf left over I'm thinking my next terrain project might involve
creating some unkempt hedgerows that could also work as bocage.

Posted by The Tactical Painter at 16:27

Labels: Terrain

38 comments:
JOHNBOND 21 November 2019 at 16:50

Nice results Mark,visually they will make a great impacted on the gaming table
cheers JOhn

Reply

Replies

The Tactical Painter 22 November 2019 at 07:36

Thanks John, I'm looking forward to getting these into use next week for our next Gembloux Gap game.

Reply

Codsticker 21 November 2019 at 18:44

Great trees, lots of useful info here.

Reply

Replies

The Tactical Painter 22 November 2019 at 07:36

Thanks, glad you've found it useful.

Reply

Carole 21 November 2019 at 19:14

They look great. Mind you, I always like the look of your tables.

Reply

Replies

The Tactical Painter 22 November 2019 at 07:37

 Thanks Carole, always nice to know that all the effort put into terrain is appreciated!

Reply

Phil Robinson 21 November 2019 at 19:37

Treemendous post.

Reply

Replies

The Tactical Painter 22 November 2019 at 07:38

Thanks, you could say I took a leaf out of your book.

Reply

Doug 21 November 2019 at 21:40

That's pretty much my plan.. I currently have about 200 armatures ready to go, but I am hoping to find some heavy washers
to base on. I did however take a deep breath when I saw the pricing on some of the Scenics glues etc.. so I am going to
experiment with rubber cement first, which is about 20% of the price.

Reply

Replies

The Tactical Painter 22 November 2019 at 07:40

I ran out of scenic cement but made up a batch of my own. If you dilute white glue (PVA) with water at a 1:3 ratio
that also works. However a lot of PVA will dry glossy, so I ended up using Modge Podge Matte Medium, but any
matt medium would do. Add a few drops of detergent to help break the surface tension and it sprays perfectly.

Reply

commissarmoody 21 November 2019 at 21:42

Thanks for sharing. I am going to have to save this for future reference.

Reply

Replies

The Tactical Painter 22 November 2019 at 07:41

Cheers, I hope you find it useful.

Reply

The Wargames Table 21 November 2019 at 23:20

A superb article Mark! Very interesting and useful too.

Thanks
Matt

Reply

Replies

The Tactical Painter 22 November 2019 at 07:41

Thanks Matt.

Reply

PatG 22 November 2019 at 00:08

Great article - thank you!

Reply

Replies

The Tactical Painter 22 November 2019 at 07:41

Thanks Pat.

Reply
TamsinP 22 November 2019 at 01:13

Great trees, Mark :)

Reminder to self - need to do some trees for myself...

Reply

Replies

The Tactical Painter 22 November 2019 at 07:42

Thanks Tamsin. Always great to have lots of trees, but quite the storage issue too. I've found once you're on a roll
making them it's easy to make up quite a few.

Reply

Stew 22 November 2019 at 02:09

Great tutorial on how to get trees looking very good. Everyone could use more trees on the table. 😀
Reply

Replies

The Tactical Painter 22 November 2019 at 07:43

Thanks Stew, yes, never enough trees, but then where to store them all?

Reply

john de terre neuve 22 November 2019 at 05:06

Nice work, I find though that specific sprayer keeps getting blocked up and after awhile is impossible to clear.

Reply

Replies

The Tactical Painter 22 November 2019 at 07:44

Thanks John. I haven't had that problem yet but I do make sure I rinse it out thoroughly immediately after every
use.

Reply

Norm 22 November 2019 at 05:45

Enjoyed - thanks

Reply

Replies

The Tactical Painter 22 November 2019 at 07:44

Thanks Norm.

Reply

Silver Whistle 24 November 2019 at 20:42

Thanks for the mention Mark.

Great job with the trees and bases and I look forward to seeing the hedges.
Cheers,
Pat

Reply

Replies

The Tactical Painter 25 November 2019 at 10:10

No worries Pat, happy to give credit where it is due. Best of luck with the new terrain book, it looks like another
winner. You're an inspiration to us all.

Reply

Moiterei_1984 25 November 2019 at 07:50

Very well done on these trees. Will make sure to use the one or other of your tips when I make some more trees for my own
table.

Reply

(Kym) + Warburton + (Classic40K) 25 November 2019 at 08:55

These look great. I will use some of the tips. I have used the coarse turf to make some pine trees before and it worked quite
well. I also sprinkled bright green foam flock over the top to act as a highlight, as an additional step which worked well.

Do you think if you sprayed aerosol adhesive or scenic cement over the Noch leaves they would stay on better? They do look
good.

Also where did you get the rubberised fibre from?

And can your next tutorial be on storing the trees?! ;)

Reply

Replies

The Tactical Painter 25 November 2019 at 10:16

You're right the leaves do look very good and I suspect the issue might be solved with better adhesive (and more
of it!). I guess they're really designed for static model railways displays where movement and storage are not an
issue. The fibre I sourced online but it was a while ago and I can't recall exactly where, probably eBay (I do recall
that it came from a UK supplier). As for storing them, they are just in stackable plastic tubs (to maintain domestic
harmony I have turned the storage of wargaming minis and terrain into a fine art and should probably do a blog
post on just that LOL!)

(Kym) + Warburton + (Classic40K) 26 November 2019 at 13:47

Cheers, yes I was joking a bit about the storage but trees are one thing I can't find a great solution for (I just put
them in storage tubs in the shed, but they are thing most likely to break out of all my collection).

Reply

mordredsminiatures.blogspot.com 26 November 2019 at 23:28

Thank you for this tutorial. Very inspiring!

Reply

Gerry 23 March 2020 at 14:11

Thanks for a very informative how-to, Mark. Spending time on these is well worthwhile as they suit most Wargaming periods.
Gerry

Reply

corvusboreus 24 April 2020 at 08:21

Cool trees.
I base some of my vegetation in clumps or copses with their canopy foliage crowded together. This gives a more stable
base, and works particularly well for depicting more dense or naturalistic forested areas.
Often in nature, a single standing tree will, through bird activity, start to aquire other smaller trees around it's base, and
mimicking this tendency can add a extra layer of realism.
I also overcome a rather pinched purse by using 'natural resourse'. For example most of my tree and shrub armatures are
sourced by uprooting specimens of 'Senna pendula', an exotic weed that proloferates in my area. The base and roots of this
shrub, when inverted, can make a very realistic representation of a tree's branch structure with a complexity that is hard to
replicate. A coat of varnish, and a some spray adhesive, apply foliage/flock then fixative and voila, instant trees ready to
base, for a fraction of the cost of shop bought items.
The drawback disclaimer is that, being natural materials, there is not only probably a shorter shelf life and the risk of them
carrying pests (eg termites and borers) so you may want to initially disinfect by dipping your 'senna armitures' in boiling
water.

Reply

Replies

The Tactical Painter 26 April 2020 at 09:21

Agree, clumps of trees are definitely more natural, but I guess we need to strike the balance between their
appearance and their ability to function on a gaming table. For my jungle terrain you will see I went down the path
of creating more clumps of trees and vegetation to get the desired density. Although every now and then I find the
odd Japanese or Australian figure ‘lost’ in a terrain piece. I live in Sydney and we have a place on the NSW south
coast so I’ll keep an eye out for some cassia and try out your method.

corvusboreus 10 May 2020 at 09:56

Happy to help. Cassia that is growing in sandy or swampy soil is the easiest to uproot, and the root structure
tends to be reflected above ground, so the straight symmetrical specimens will tend to have straight symmetrical
 root systems.

I live on mid north coast NSW, and just started getting into chain of command (using 1/72) before the Rona-rat
closed things down. Your blog provides some fantastic ideas and been invaluable in helping me maintain project
momentum during the hiatus, so many thanks.
Hope we can roll some dice and push some plastic when things get back to normal.

The Tactical Painter 11 May 2020 at 08:28

My daughter lives in Nambucca, are you far from there? I don’t visit that often, but get up there from time to time.

corvusboreus 18 September 2020 at 06:43

I live about half an hour north of Nambucca, and do most of my gaming about half an hour north of where I live (a
mate's shed near Woolgoolga.
If you wanted to take a diversionary trip next time you visited your daughter I would be happy to accommodate.
I can be contacted at corvusboreus@gmail.com

Ps,my given name is Ewan, by the way,'corvus' is just an alias of affectation.

Reply

Bluewillow 10 July 2020 at 01:39

Great stuff, doing some myself at the moment

Reply

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