Forestry 101

 

This week, I've been working on getting some winter forests done to flesh out my terrain collection. I already have some regular summer pine trees and some small orchard trees, but I wanted something purpose-built for winter-y games, seeing as my main interest is the eastern front.

To that end, I just finished up 12 bases of winter pine trees and five standalone pines, as well as five bases and five single deciduous trees. This should give me enough to cover a decent section of tabletop.

I've chosen group basing for my trees because the idea of making a forest from single trees sounds exhausting. The best option, I think, would be large bases with removable trees, but then you run into the problem of dozens of single trees again, and storage of larger bases could be a pain.

So I settled on clusters of three to four trees on a single base that can give the impression of a thickly forested area while leaving spots to place troops. The large bases also prevents careless players knocking over a whole forest with one swipe.

My pine trees are improved Christmas village trees prepared in the method suggested by Jeremy of Black Magic Craft. I prepared these in a large batch a while back and used them as needed, so unfortunately I don't have photos of the process. Jeremy's video is great though, check it out.

My deciduous trees are Woodland Scenics armatures, except for one that I made from twisted floral wire coated in hot glue. The WS trees are sturdier, but take time to clean up mold lines (this would be less of a problem if I was adding foliage, which I am not in this case). I'm not sure which I prefer, but I clearly went with mostly WS here.

The bases are pieces of hardboard cut and sanded to shape from the backs of wooden clipboards. I buy 3-packs at Walmart for a few bucks. It would probably be better to buy larger sheets of MDF/hardboard from the hardware store, but I haven't gone that route just yet.

The single trees are based on metal washers for stability.

I glued the plastic bases of the WS trees directly to the bases and then textured the base with brown tile grout and dried herbs. I would normally use Vallejo's texture paste or spackle/wall filler mixed with sand, but I've been trying this grout and have been pretty pleased. The herb method comes from Mel the Terrain Tutor's Burma terrain build, but I have seen others do it.

I like the texture it gave the pieces, but some of it flaked off during the later drybrushing, so I maybe should have sealed it in with watered down PVA glue.

The pine bases get cork and more grout. This is to give the thin metal stems of the trees something to grab onto when they're glued in without adding too much height to the base. I don't like scatter terrain that rises dramatically from the ground around it.

The whole gang

After this, I gave them a coat of dark brown spray paint. This probably wasn't strictly necessary because of the basing materials I used, but I'm used to using white texture pastes that need painting over. This paint color is really too dark for my tastes, and it's satin instead of matte, but I had it lying around.

Next, a gradual drybrushing up to a lighter brown color with cheap craft paints and a big brush. I also lightly brushed some yellow and red over the bases with leaf texture to imply some fall leaves, but I don't think it ended up showing up. Oh well.

There are blobs of blu-tac over the stumps of the WS trees to help keep the colors of the trunk uniform.

Very very light drybrushing with fall leaf colors

Next, time to tackle snow for the bases. I love Games Workshop's Valhallan Blizzard for figure bases, but it's too expensive for terrain. I tried out the Vallejo texture paste I mentioned earlier with a bit of snow flock sprinkled over the top before it dried. I'm rather pleased with the result, especially from tabletop distances. I believe I got this idea from Travis over at Tabletop CP on YouTube.

Winter has arrived

The next step was messy so I didn't take photos, but I took my pre-prepped pines and sprinkled them with snow flocking, using hairspray as adhesive on the recommendation of a railroad modeler. I don't get on well with spray adhesive, and while the hairspray was definitely weaker, I'm not sticky all over, so I call it a win.

By the end I ran a little short on snow flock, but I think I got the effect across. After that I heavily sealed the trees with matte spray to attempt to keep the flock from falling off. I had some success, but they may need to be spruced up later down the road.

I also drybrushed the WS trees with grey, but that's not terribly noticeable from tabletop distance.

Finally, I added some Army Painter grass tufts and lightly applied some Valhallan Blizzard to make it look like snow was clinging to the grass. It's not terribly noticeable in these photos, but I think it adds a nice finishing touch.

Very subtle

Finally, some shots on my winter mat with some minis and a cozy little Russian hut.