Welcome to my blog, the story of my continuing journey into the World of Zombie Wargames.

Monday 16 December 2013

Trees

The demise of our local "Model Zone" shop saw my eldest son buying up trees, more than he could use so I ended up being the beneficiary of one bag of trees, with somewhere around 18 trees in it.

The trees themselves lay dormant in their bag for a few months before I finally got around to seeing what I could do with them.

My original intent was to use a couple of them in the park that I built, but as those of you who saw the finished park that idea had gone out of the window. 
 I decided to dig out my old trees and base them up with the new ones I'd acquired from my son.
The few, still "usable" trees that I dug out were in a very sorry state as can be seen by the photograph on the left. It's no wonder the state that they were in considering that they're probably over thirty years old and have been through many, many tabletop battles.

I did think that they were salvageable though and with a generous amount of PVA glue and flock (some of which came from the bag the new trees occupied) I think I made a reasonable job of rescuing them from obscurity.
The result of my efforts can be seen in the photograph on the right. The flock I used is probably just about as old as the trees and is a mix of home-made and commercial (I think).
It only remained for the new trees to be mounted on irregular shapes bases of differing sizes and the refurbished old ones to be interspersed amongst them.
I mounted all the trees in multiples of two, three or more trees; the bases were chamferred and given a coating of wall filler for texture and painted in greens and browns.
The final outcome wasn't as shabby as I thought it would turn out and the 'rescued' trees fitted in well enough for me. (The tree on the right in the first photo is one.)

Although the whole process took quite a while and I was plagued with problems over getting the models and paint to stick to the bases (goodness knows why), I'm quite happy with the result 

That's it for another week and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

22 comments:

  1. Trees are such an intragal part of any wargames terrain. We all need them and delight in the use of them. Many of us including me do not treat them as well as we should. Nice save on the old trees and it looks like you have a nice little wood there.

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    1. Thanks Clint, in the past I've always had unbased trees used singly, so this is quite a new venture for me.

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  2. Joe, this is a topic I'd like to explore on my own blog. As Clint said, trees are very much an integral part of wargaming terrain. I have been basing my trees individually on various sizes of circular wooden bases. Thanks for the reminder that trees are important and nice work on your own little wood.

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    1. It seemed a bit alien to me to base them together especially for a skirmish game where an individual can utilise a tree for cover rather than having to delineate a wooded area.

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  3. Good job on the refurbishment. If anything, adds to the sense of variety in a good way. :)

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    1. Thanks PC, I generally don't like waste and it seemed like a good idea to try and save these.

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  4. You can never have too many trees :-) ! Those ones look just fine to me.

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    1. Thanks C6, I don't think I've ever had so many, but at least I can now make a reasonable attempt at some rural terrain.

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  5. I get this post, forests have always been an issue for me, this looks good. Now it could be that I base on old CDs and don't get the variation that you have here. Good stuff.

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    1. Thanks Irqan, it took me a long time to decide how i was going to base these, old cd's being one of the options too as I know how good others can make them look.

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  6. You can never have enough trees - not something the wife agrees with however!

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    1. I think I'm in agreement - on both counts !

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  7. You've done a great job salvaging them, well done. Michael's right, you can never have enough trees!

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    1. Thanks ZA,, they're going to be a very useful addition to my scenery.

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  8. Great rescue! You now how have a veritable forest! The new and old look good together.

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    1. Thanks Brummie, I'm pleased that making the effort to rescue the old ones turned out so well.

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  9. Those are good trees, glad you got them for the right price.

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    1. Thanks Baconfat and it's the price I really liked about them.

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