Saturday, February 17, 2018

Terrain Day: Tree WIP, Cornfields, and More!

There's an old military saying I heard a wise man utter and that's "time spent on wargaming terrain is never wasted."  Okay so that's not the saying but you get the idea.  I had some free time this afternoon and thought I'd knock out, or at least start, some terrain projects that are high on the priority list for 2018. 
My pathetic stable of "finished" trees.  literally 16 of them...
TREES
My trees are in pretty rough shape although I had ordered plenty of new ones at bargain-basement prices from the Chinese, I left most of them still in their packaging.  Well the old ones are inconsistent scales, types, etc.  I decided to finally break out my new trees and base them.  Phase 2 will be texturing and flocking the bases.  I also am in the process of cleaning up some drop terrain "forest bases" that I can just plop the trees down onto.
New pine trees in background drying their base glue
 I'm going to be individually basing all my trees now for use in multiple game systems and also for ease of storage.

Big cedar trees and in the background, my cake topper palm trees finally being based for some afrika korps gaming.

leftover deciduous trees from my original collection.  They'll all get the same textured and painted treatment as the tree in the center of the picture.


Tree WIP.  Once the bases are more uniform, they'll start to take on a better look IMHO.

HEDGES
I've been a cheapskate in gaming as far back as I can remember.  Today I'm no different and am always looking for a bargain or a neat idea to get nice looking terrain on the table at a manageable cost.  I can't remember where I saw it from but I got the idea on the internet to use the heavy duty scour pads as hedges.  You just cut them into strips, and spray paint them.  I went one further and sprayed them with glue and dipped into my flock mixture!  I think they look pretty respectable.  






One package got me 12 hedges.  These will be great for fencing in backyards, cropfields, or whatever else.

The flock and scouring pad underneath really look good I think.
 DROP TERRAIN: CORNFIELDS
I was gaming at Ken's house playing the pre-cursor to BATTLEGROUP: NORTHAG and noticed he had some neat crops as drop terrain.  The shape looked very familiar and upon inspection, the crops were placed upon restuarant gift cards (the same size as a credit/debit card).  And you could arrange them however you liked.  Well I REALLY dug this idea and started to recreate this.  Now I can place these in some backyards as well or assemble them together for a field.

Not done yet.  This is just the vallejo mud drying.  I still need to paint and drybrush the soil and the crops.  These crops will fit in literally any theater I need them in.  Note the different arrangements you can make with them!




Well that's all for now.  I also painted a platoon's worth of Russian bases today, and a company's worth of German bases to finish off this WWII project.  Speaking of WWII, more Soviet Naval Infantry are on the workbench, and in keeping my promises, I've got a Loyalist Infantry Unit from the American War for Independence up next as well!  I'm hoping to get them all painted tomorrow.  I know I know big plans!  I hope everyone is having a good weekend.

Post coming up on using Risk pieces to build another army for 10mm Napoleonics - I need more Prussians for Waterloo!  Speaking of cheap, you can buy Risk replacement pieces for like 10 bucks on ebay and those awesome light cavalry are worth the price alone and you get a shedload of them.

4 comments:

  1. Looking good man, and those custom cards you had made are cool as hell, I need to look into that!

    Been sick for as long as I can remember now, but the table is set for the boy and I to start WWIII for TF Wolverines tomorrow.

    V/R,
    Jack

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  2. I do like your job on these trees, beautiful and realistic!

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