One of the things I’ve been doing during lockdown (actually since just before last Christmas) is work on scenery for my WW2 games. I’m working on a bocage country and european style countryside on my Grasslands Cigar Box Battle mat and the Tunisian desert and later Crete/Italy using my Arid land mat. I chose to start working on the ‘42-‘43 period in the desert for a couple of reasons. Some interesting belligerents (Italy/DAK/First Americans) with unique or specific vehicles, very different open terrain compared to Normandy and Europe (but not the vast open spaces of the earlier desert campaign which would be better in 6mm) and it doesn’t take too much scenery to do a good representation. A couple of buildings, some rock formations and a relatively small selection of trees.
Unfortunately for the generic green classic terrain (Something I would like for WW2 Normandy/Europe and Very British Civil War) there is lots to do. The bocage is a very time consuming type of scenery that usually doesn’t turn up enough on tables/or in suitable amounts and is often much more work than it’s probably worth. I’m still determined to make some, luckily a lot of the hedgerows in the area around Herefordshire where I grew up and intend to set my VBCW games are very like bocage giving it a second use. Trees are a key bit of scenery I need to do and something you always need more than you think.
For the past six years my favourite opponent and I have used his trees made from Woodlands Scenics armatures and clump foliage. These were the pine tree shapes (done as poplars) and can be seen in all my past game pictures. He recently gave them to me as after six years of gaming they were starting to suffer and I volunteered to try and revive them. Whilst they are a great start I realised I’d need to make some more and based up 25 large deciduous armatures on metal washers and based them with sand and slate. Its only a start and I’ll need to tackle coniferous trees at some point but at least it’s something.
A word of advice about Woodlands Scenics tree armatures. They are brilliant and make reasonably realistic trees possible in a relatively short time but...... my experience of them has been that they often have quite pronounced mould lines and it can take an awful long time to trim this down with a sharp knife and sand it with an abrasive pad. Literally ages, I thought they were ready for paint, took a photo of them and started seeing mould lines and just spent the evening re-doing them, again. Next up some paint and then I’ll do a how to on making them look like trees (If I can).
I also made trees for my desert/arid setting using spare renedra bases (60mm and some oval ones that came in my fire forge cavalry) and a range of plastic palm trees bought from eBay. I bought a good range of sizes I thought would be appropriate for 1:100 or 15mm (and gifted those that were too big to my friend for Bushido) and drilled guide holes, glued them into place and added weight with slate pieces before covering them with fine bird sand. The trees needed a lot of cleaning up as they weren’t brilliantly moulded but hopefully once painted they will be serviceable. The oval based palms allow a line of trees to be placed or areas filled. Apart from Olive trees and some bushes the only vegetation I need for Tunisia is cactus patches (something I need to think about).
So not the most exciting update but a true representation of the work needed if you want to play pretty looking games with little soldiers. I haven’t painted them yet as I need to work out how to get the tone I need to match my mat (I have a test piece thats a WIP).
Stay safe, feel free to comment about your own terrain project I always need inspiration.
BALM
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