Many years ago, twenty years to be precise, I put on a game that was a refight of the Battle of Pea Ridge or Elkhorn Tavern at one of our annual wargames weekends away - I'm not sure if I can call it an annual event anymore since COVID and the illness of our host have prevented us holding an event for the last three years. Because the original battle was fought in winter and the trees were deciduous I needed trees without foliage. I started with the woodlands scenics armatures, but they were quite expensive and I needed a LOT of trees - anyone who has studied the battle knows that field was heavily wooded.
So I made most of these trees by making armatures from 18 gauge wire, coating the armature with a maché of toilet paper and PVA and then painting them. I made quite a few of these...actually I made a lot of them...probably as many as 100. Those who played in that game remember them well because as they manoeuvred their figures through the woods and were not careful the got stabbed by the ends of the wire armatures with loud shrieks that called my parentage into question more than once.
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| Three of the original tree armatures with those evil sharp ends. |
Sadly a number of these trees were lost or damaged over the years (a number of them were flattened beyond recovery when a box fell in the garage as I was reversing out - thankfully the car was not damaged by the falling timber) - while some have been repurposed. Twenty of them had foliage added to them and formed part of my woods project three and a half years ago. My recent dabbling with trees has got me keen to return to that project and I have made another seven deciduous trees.
This gives me around 30 deciduous trees and that should be enough for now. Next are a batch of conifer trees.
The trees look beautiful Mark, great work!
ReplyDeleteYes the forest is coming together nicely
DeleteGreat work on these
ReplyDeleteThank you Neil
DeleteVery nice indeed…
ReplyDeleteI do wonder at times if I have too many trees … but they are really good for skirmish games.
All the best. Aly
The real beauty about these trees is that with all the spray paint and PVA applied to them they are really robust and should withstand the rigours of play. I would love to make more trees, but where to store them is the issue.
DeleteThe added foliage really highlights the beautiful basing. Great work Mark. I went out and purchase some 40 litre flat plastic storage boxes for my trees but was disappointed in how few I can actually store in them and they have ended up taking up more room than they were originally.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean. I bought some 25mm deep 4 drawer units that were on special at a local supplier and was surprised how little I could fit in them.
DeleteThose are some good looking trees. All mine are with the woodland scenic armatures, how 'd you get the wire into a tree trunk shape?
ReplyDeleteThanks Stew. I still have most of the Woodlands Scenics armatures and use them for my Retreat from Moscow games. These wire ones are much more robust. I am making some conifer/fir trees at the moment so I will add an armature making tutorial to my next post.
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