Trees - Cedar of Lebanon 28 mm

Nothing quite like trees for getting us all going. For some of us the search to get the right good looking trees that fit, comes second only to that of getting the perfect rule set.

I've made a few over the years as I have failed to see how some of the offerings we used to get were at all compatible with 28 mm figures.
After all trees aren't two or three times bigger, they soar above us and nothings looks dafter than four inch trees (100 mm) alongside twelve inch  buildings (300 mm).
So much so that in 28 mm you will rarely see trees and building on the same table.







I was playing around with the idea of doing something different rather than a bristle brush offering and came up with this.

Two 28 mm LOTR figures are on the base and you can see the size. However I'm still not happy as I feel the trunk should be twice the size, so the model can hide behind it, but it's close.

In the second photo the same tree, revamped this year, some 8 years later and it begins to look like my objective. This is from a

Frostgrave shot with a Reaper mini and an even older LOTR figure Boromir, hate to think how old that is.

The trunk is still too narrow as I revamped the foliage rather than the trunk.



For those interested in construction.

Get some lengths of wire and twist them together.
I believe I started with six, twisting them from about two inches, using a vice and pliers. Where I wanted the first branch I separated out one piece of wire and twisted the remaining five strands, repeat for second and third, e.t.c., until you have two strands left. Normally you cut all the strands off at the point you want a branch to stop especially if you are doing a dead tree.(longer at the bottom, shorter at the top),
This time I made a giant loop of each strand.

The base of the wire strands were then splayed out to allow the tree to stand, whilst I left them at about two to three inches you can leave them longer and twist them to look like roots. I decided to 'glue' this to an old CD, windows 95 OS I believe, maybe I should have used an old 'Evergreens' cd.

I glued it using the same brown mastic that you might use on dark brown hardwood as it would save me painting it later. When set I then applied additional mastic to the trunk of the tree and branches smoothing up and down the trunk and along the branches to get a bark effect.
[NOTE, keep a small pot of water nearby and wet your fingers as you 'sculpt' the mastic this will stop it sticking to your fingers, also ensure you have tissues to wipe your fingers on after you are done in order to keep your partner happy.]

You can thicken the mastic up as mush as you want, either by wrapping string around the trunk first or by applying more mastic when the first is dry. A happy side effect is that when dry you can bend the branches or trunk to any shape you want as demonstrated by these two photos.

I then got some wire wool and partially threaded the loop through this gluing it in place and roughly positioning the branches horizontally. Lots more glue was the sprayed over the wire wool both on top and below the branches and then I drenched it with flock.

When I revisited the project I added more, better quality flock to top and underneath of branches, let it dry and sprayed and flocked again.
I then applied a sand/pva paste to the CD and when dry, dry brushed before flocking.
[Today I'd use brown wood filler].

I think the tree looks right with the buildings.





Of course today you can get excellent trees from 4ground, but at £24 for three trees?

So DIY still appeals to me as I can get the height I want too..

But 4grounds offerings are stunning.



If you want to see my take on a Si-Fi then look here Alien Trees 28 mm.

Desert town

This month I went to the Joy of Six  a small show, which may be appropriate as it is all 6 mm figures/scenery, but all the human participants were 1:1.

I purchased some Desert Domes from Brigade Models for my games of Future War Commander.

Made from resin they are solid and attractive and I thought to paint them up for jungle terrain as Alien Domes.

Funny how your brush and paints take over. I tried a few colour schemes and ended up with desert terrain, ah well, will now need to purchase more 6 mm Desert stuff.  - Once again a project escalates, at least this time it is out of the packet, assembled mounted and painted before the next purchase rather than just adding to the resin/metal/plastic mountains.

They were very well cast, odd small holes that were ignorable, as they added character if you could spot them and a couple of small flecks that needed fettling, nothing serious and unusually for me I washed them before using.

I had to now choose between creating a dynamic scene or individually mount them. It's always a problem, you want the models to look good on the table, but you want to move the troops through the built up area the building are supposed to represent. I decided to go down the route I use for trees; felt cloth represents the woods' boundaries and trees scattered on the cloth make the point.

For game simplicity my towns have straight edges, none of this medieval mishmash of town planning, no a fresh planet with organised town planning from the beginning! I will place the terrain piece on the table, replacing them with grey felt if troops move in to that area.

Designing the layout

I originally thought to mount them on 2-3 mm MDF board that I'd cut into 100 mm (4") squares, they looked wrong and casting about for inspiration I saw the 6 mm  La Haye Saint model based 100 mm x 125 mm (4" x 6" almost), the rectangle looked better and when I realised I got four out of the strip instead of 4 + wastage I was sold.


The cleaned models were first assembled on to the 'cut' bases. This allowed me to think about setup. As usual I had no plan and was allowing the pieces etc to make the decisions for me.

Mixing the basing materials

Copydex and PVA backup

In the past I used to glue the models to the base with PVA and then spread around it a mix of paint, sand and glue, this was time consuming and messy. However I was recently shown another system used by a fellow gamer Chris McGill.

He uses a proprietary wood filler from Wilko, in this instance I used a brown one, you can get white. You can add colour to the filler I have a tube of Burnt Umber acrylic paint I use, although I soon saw the 'out of the tub' colour was what I was after anyway.

The paint or in my case a little water softens the mix up so you can spread it on with a knife, running a wet finger over the top will give you a smooth 'paved stone' finish you can draw lines in, in this case a dry finger roughened it up a bit as I wanted natural terrain, soil with all its lumps and bumps.


Once you have sculpted the surface you then attach the models with Copydex, ( I know weird), this then takes the best part of 12 - 24 hours to set.

Based and drying out/setting

The fact is that a later application of water to the terrain 'melts' the adhesive and the models can be removed and washed clean and reused elsewhere. In the case of 6 mm men no damage is done to a single model.

In my opinion this far outweighs any perceived disadvantage of waiting for it to set. However the odd piece will take longer to dry or be too heavy, then I use PVA glue, if the building breaks away from it's base, an application of flock hides the repair.

Once assembled I used a coffee stirrer to make paths from building to building, all leading to a central point I planned to put a 35 mm base there, a teleport/landing pad, we'll see.

I added some white some chips I'd rescued from a path some time ago.

Painted and the different densities of Ink show up nicely

The following day I started painting one base and after trial and error came up with the 'concept' I liked and finished it all off.

The buildings were first undercoated with and then painted in 'Sand' then I picked out the windows in blue (Caledor Sky), recessed lines in Golden Yellow and some patches of Jade Green, over painting the reds I'd started with, as always the scenery tells you what colour it wants to be Doors and window frames were painted with Mithril Silver.

I then washed it all over with Peat Brown, applying it straight on and watering it down in place so I got variety.

When dry I put more wash on the window's slats and doors to bring out the detail. You can't do this at the same time as the ink spreads out to other wet areas.

I dry brushed the ground with the same cheap acrylic, sand colour and was then was going to apply sand in patches but it looked wrong so I flocked over it and added flock elsewhere. Using a brown dessert grasses flock I bought years ago; GW I think.

Finished All pictures here

I had intended to ink the stone in interesting Alien colours, tried it out on a test stone, nope, so they stay as nature intended.

I like to think of the stone circles as part of the mechanics of the teleportation device/receiver, maybe on Earth that's what all the stone circles are copies off, mimicking the 'Sky Gods' bases.