Easy to make trees

It seems very fitting to be posting this today. Outside there are signs that spring has arrived - the sun has finally made an appearance and the temperature has climbed into double figures. Green shoots are everywhere, including in my terrain collection.

After the partial success of my trees made from garden waste, I wanted something that was more sturdy but not too expensive. You might remember that I recently picked up some tree armatures from a hobby shop. I also bought some rubberised horsehair (from ebay, the hobby shop did not stock this item). With my collection of turf and foliage that I usually use on bases, it was time to get started.

After googling countless model train sites for instruction, I stuck the horsehair to the branches using pva glue and then, when fully dry, trimmed off the most straggly bits. Then I sprayed the trunks with a grey primer and applied some very quick and basic drybrushing. Finally, I used a cheap extra firm hold hairspray (from the local supermarket) to fix the foliage on to the armatures. Simply spray, sprinkle, spray, sprinkle, until you are happy with the effect. A final trim of any straggly horsehair and it's job done. This test batch of three trees costs around a pound in materials, and about half an hour of hobby time to make, and I think the results are reasonable for that investment. They are a bit flat, I need to work out how to get the horsehair "plumped up" when I stick it to the branches, but I am quite happy with this first attempt. Easy to make trees

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Warg Riders, in a field

A quick snap of the very early stages of my next unit, eight warg riders for my Isengard/Mordor contingent. I picked up ten of the old metals on ebay as a joblot, but decided that eight was enough for a game of Saga (with six being sufficient for a Lion Rampant game). I had to strip some of them of paint and also had to greenstuff over some really bad joins. I removed them from the round plastic bases and have them mounted on mdf (from good old warbases of course). The next step is to add a bit of sand and then prime and paint them.

Hastings five-a-side squad out for a training session

I have also been quickly making some grassy fields, from a piece of teddy fur painted with green and yellow acrylic paint. I used a standard decorating brush, with really stiff bristles. This had the double benefit of simultaneously applying colour and brushing out the fluffy bits in the fur. When dried I cut it up into three large fields. Surrounded by fences and hedges it looks reasonably like a field of grass. My next terrain project will have to be some quick and easy hedges to surround these and the older "just planted" fields I made a while back. Warg Riders, in a field

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Bare Trees

I have always been keen to keep wargaming costs down, last year I made a forest of very cheap trees. However, on a recent day trip to Chester I stopped in at the model shop and picked up a few supplies, including these Woodland Scenics armatures. For just over £13 there are 28 armatures, including bases. It may be possible to find natural hardwood cuttings from your garden for nothing, but the time saving here is a bonus, plus at less than 50p a trunk it's not expensive. The armatures are packed flat, you have to twist them into shape, then glue them on to the bases. Mine are also glued on to two pence pieces, to give them extra stability and so I can slot them into my terrain bases. It struck me at this stage that a quick coat of paint and a bit of drybrushing would yield some pretty decent spooky trees for a haunted forest look. I have other plans, but I might keep a few to one side for my Garden of Morr. Alternatively, they could be painted up and used as bare winter trees, imagine them lightly coated with snow flock. Bare Trees

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Wargaming Terrain Mat from a blanket

I have wanted a portable gaming board for some time. A few years back I bought one of the plastic boards from GW, painted it up and flocked it and had a few battles on it. But it was very heavy and not really portable, the two foot squares in a zip bag still take up a considerable space in your cupboard. In the end, I sold it because it was too big for my small space, but of course then I had no playing area. I had high hopes for a kickstarter terrain set with one foot square tiles, but that was delayed by over a year and the storage solution originally promised never really materialised, so eventually I got a refund. Back to square one again.

I started to look around at what other gamers did, there are many blogs out there with different solutions, different materials and different price points. My main criteria were it had to be easy to set up and take down on my dining table, easy to store and (preferably) low cost. I was very impressed by some of the battle boards seen at show reports, especially those made from teddy fur - shaved and painted it can look very realistic. In the end, I went for the much simpler option of a fleece blanket and cheap poster paint.

The first photo shows the blanket on my dining room table, it's a 5x3 table rather than the more common 6x4 battle board,so more suitable for large skirmish games like Saga, but that's okay as that's what I play more of these days. The blanket is actually 5x4 and of course they can be bought in various sizes. I got mine from ebay for a mere £6, a brown coloured one to give me a basic earth colour backdrop to work on. It's quite cheap and thin, not really that good as an actual blanket I would have guessed, but perfect as a lightweight battle mat. I sprayed one side with dull yellow for a very simple desert/arid set up. The other side I painted with cheap poster paint, a tube each of green and yellow gave me many shades to work with at a cost of just £5. I applied the paints using a scouring pad, these can be picked up really cheaply from supermarkets, or pilfered from your kitchen cupboard. Adding in the spray can paint, I reckon the whole thing cost me about £15 and two or three hours of hobby time.

The second photo gives a more accurate rendition of the colours. I have deliberately made it lusher on one half, the more muddy half can be the location for a village, or damp ground, or whatever. The third photo shows the simple arid/desert side - anyone with a blanket and a spray can achieve this mottled effect. The paint has made the blanket a little stiffer, but it's still compact enough when folded to throw in a drawer. Now that I have a backdrop to work to, I am going to work on a few other terrain bits - my tree bases and my dark ages village. Then all I need are my two sons to volunteer to play toy soldiers with their sad old dad and my xmas will be complete. Wargaming Terrain Mat from a blanket

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Making cheap wargames trees part 3

In this post I am not really making trees, but the magnetic bases on which the trees will stand. If you remember from part 1, the trees are based on 2p pieces, so I needed something with this size holes. My first port of call was the excellent warbases and I found that they did indeed make terrain bases. There are a number of sizes of base and hole to choose, though a 2p sized hole was not on their list. This is not a problem, if you ask them they will happily make the holes this size for you at no extra cost. You can also buy integrated "bottoms" too, but I don't need them.

My tray "bottoms" are simply strips of magnetic sheet superglued on to the mdf bases. I took the opportunity to use some of the offcuts I had accumulated from making movement trays. As you can see I did not attempt to cover the whole underside of the base, just enough to ensure each hole has a magnetic piece beneath it. When the glue was fully dried I simply trimmed off any excess. And that's it! I then flipped them right side up and added a little texture using small stones and sand in the usual way. I set them aside to dry overnight.

The next stage was to seal the texture. I mixed up some water and pva, to which I added a drop of detergent. Then I coloured this mix slightly with some earth colour. I applied this all over the bases with a big nylon brush - these can be picked up cheaply from art and discount book stores and are very useful for terrain work. Note that I have plugged the holes with (non-magnetic) 2p coins here, to prevent too much paint getting on to the magnetic sheet. After a quick blast with a hairdryer I applied a few more splodges of thinned brown craft paints, again picked up from bargain bins along the way to use in terrain projects. I kept this a bit random, though darker in the centre and around rocks was a general principle.

After another blast with the hairdryer it was time for the moment of truth. I knocked out all the non-magnetic coins, a couple had to be prised out as a little paint/glue had managed to seep in. This was easily removed with a bit of tissue. Then the magnetic based trees were popped in for the test. Two of these three trees actually stayed in with the base held fully upside down, the bigger (and thus heavier) tree survived at a 90 degree angle. Not bad at all, perfectly adequate for gaming. There's still a little work to do on the bases with regard to flocking and such like, but hopefully you get the general idea on how it all works. Making cheap wargames trees part 3

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Making cheap wargames trees part 2

In the first part I made the bases from pennies and paper clips, then textured them with sand and stones. While waiting for them to dry I made a start on the trees.

Some of the best wargames trees I have seen are made from seafoam, basically a dried twig! So I started to look around for something similar, but free (the seafoam trees are £20 or more on ebay). I also wanted something more conifer, less deciduous. Luckily for me, I have a huge buddleia bush in my garden, like in this photo, only mine is about twelve foot tall. The flowers have gone over now and it gets pruned back every autumn, so I snipped off a few of the dead flower heads. They are reasonably robust, twiggy things.

Flower heads trimmed from the bush

Bundled together to be dried

As you can see from these two photos, I simply bundled them together using elastic bands and clothes pegs, these are now hung up in my garage drying. After a few days they will be ready to be turned into trees. I had some pre-trimmed from a couple of weeks ago and worked on them. When they dry they lose a bit of their substance and become a little bit more ragged, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I drilled holes in the stem, which are still quite soft though woody, to slide down on to the base "pin". To add foliage, I mixed up some pva glue, water and a touch of detergent in a shallow tray. The dried flower heads were dipped into this to give them a coating of the glue mix. Then I dipped the gluey twigs into some dark green flock, followed by a lighter green flock - one tone of flock looks a bit false. I then put the new leafy tree on to the base, left them overnight to fully dry.

The next task is to fix the flock on to the trees. For this I sprayed them with a hairspray, hopefully this will hold it in place. I have also read about spraying with diluted pva, but I went for the easier option. I have no idea if this will work, I can tell you better in a few months time after some gaming time, but I am treating them as disposable to an extent - if they fall to pieces/disintegrate, I can just rustle up some more in a jiffy. The total time to make the trees - trimming, drilling a hole up the trunk, dunking in glue and flock, hairspraying - is negligible, extended by drying times. It's about an hour to make up 15 to 20, enough for a few stands. And that's what I will be writing about in the next part, making a base for the individual trees.

EDIT (six months later): There's good news and there's bad news on these trees. The good news is that the hairspray technique work. The flock has stuck to the trees, so I can recommend this as a quick and easy way to stick foliage on to your terrain. Now that bad news. The vegetation is starting to crumble. It's too soft and does not last more than a few months. If you want a quick and temporary set of trees, it's fine, but they will start to fall apart after a few months. Ah well, the bases and the hairspray were sound ideas, but the cuttings need to be harder. I suspect old heather plants would yield some spectacular trees, anything that is quite tough would do. Happy arboreal hunting! Making cheap wargames trees part 2

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Making cheap wargames trees part 1

Woods and forests are one of the essential elements of any wargames terrain collection. If you buy them, ready-made or in kit form, they tend be one of two designs. There's the mini christmas tree look to emulate conifer trees, or the toffee apple look to emulate deciduous trees. There's nothing wrong with them, I have a small collection myself, but they are a bit samey and far from realistic.

The problem with having more elaborate and realistic trees, is that they can be quite expensive to buy, or very time consuming to make. I want to make some reasonably realistic trees, but I want them to be cheap and quick. Is this possible?

I started with the roots, or rather the bases. I want my trees to be reasonably stable on the tabletop. The easiest way to do this is to stick several on to a large base, a piece of mdf, hardboard or plasticard is usually used. However, this approach can cause problems when little soldiers want to get in to the trees and they don't fit. For this reason, most gamers use removable trees. When the troops march up to the forest, just pop a few trunks to one side, march in, replace the trees and job done. So the trees need to be stable but also removable.

My roots are simply paper clips, bent into mini stands with one upright "pin" on which the trunk will fit. These are fixed to a two pence piece, the more recent ones are magnetic - it's worth testing this before you go further. You could also use a washer though these are not magnetic to my knowledge. I bent the clips using my fingers, you could also use a pair of plyers. I stuck them on to the pennies using green stuff, probably not the cheapest option. An alternative would be a hot glue gun, or maybe blu tac coated with superglue. Another option that might work could be a simple tack superglued on. But I just worked with what I had at hand.

The final stage in the bases was a coat of pva glue and a sprinkle of small stones and sand. When they are stuck on they look like this. If I was making just a couple of feature trees I guess I could take more time here and sculpt on some roots - the paper clips would certainly lend themselves to this idea. But these are quick and easy trees, so no time for that. Again, you could be more elaborate at this stage and add all sorts of extra to your bases, depending on your table theme and time you want to spend. For me, these are fine and will be primed and painted in part 2. Making cheap wargames trees part 1

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Do Not Attempt This At Home!

Following on from yesterday's quizzical post, I was indeed cutting out tiles for the roof of my new building. It seemed like a good idea at the time, it's made from strips of card, with slits cut for tiles. I stupidly decided to cut off the corners of each tile, it took me well over an hour to do the whole roof, which even for a rainy Sunday afternoon seemed like a very silly thing to do. It was only after I had finished that I searched online and found that Warbases made tiling sheets. At least I know for future projects! This is the state of play at the part painted stage. I texture painted the walls, then brown stained the timbers, before I assembled the building to save time. This was before the very silly roof episode.

I quickly painted the roof and weathered the walls earlier today. Now that it's finished, it does look rather nice and will be particularly suitable to games of warhammer and medieval historical. At this stage, those of you that actually pay attention to this blog will be thinking to themselves, hang on a minute, I thought this building came with teddy fur for the roof and that it was going to be used in a dark age setting. And you would be right. Both of you. But fear not, I have a cunning plan that will enable me to use the thatched roof as well as this one. Which partly makes up for the excess of snip, snip, snip that has got me to this stage, but I have to say that it's not the best way to tile a roof. So please remember, this stunt has been performed by an expert, do not attempt this at home. Do Not Attempt This At Home!

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Timeline Miniatures Buildings Review Part 1

I recently stumbled across yet another producer of mdf terrain, Timeline Miniatures on ebay. I thought the product shots looked very promising so I bought a couple of items from the store - a Saxon house and hut to add to my growing dark ages collection. I ordered them on Wednesday evening, they arrived on Saturday, so just a couple of days to wait, which is excellent service.

The items arrived in a padded envelope. Each building is flat-packed in a plastic sleeve, with mdf components and teddy bear fur included - yes, teddy bear fur. Opening up a pack there are mdf parts for the walls and roof, doors and a base. There's also a set of  very simple instructions included, which explains the obvious bits - don't force out the parts from the frame, do a dry run first and use pva glue and acrylic paint. It would have been helpful to have some guidance on the more difficult bits - for example, some of these parts have to be removed from the "sprue", there's usually a corner that has not been completely laser cut and requires a final cut with a sharp blade for the bit to pop out of the frame. It's obvious to experienced builders but maybe not as much to newcomers to mdf materials.

Assembly is pretty simple for the most part. Four walls and two roof sections - how hard could it be? It's worth noting that there's an integral base which also helps guide you in deciding which way around walls fit. My other buildings are free standing and so I decided not to use the bases. This meant I had to cut away the tabs that slotted into the base. I used a sharp blade and a steel rule, scoring through the mdf tab several times until it came away cleanly. Without this (self-imposed) extra step I could have had the hut built in five minutes, it's that easy. I decided to part assemble mine, paint the walls and timber sections separately to hopefully make the painting a bit easier.

The final step is the application of the roof. This is where the teddy bear fur comes in. And this is the bit that I feel is missing from the instructions. The idea is to glue the fur on, trim to size, coat in dilute pva glue and allow to dry. The fur stiffens and can be painted, weathered, or could just be left as it is I suppose. I have a handful of buildings already thatched and will use the leftover fur on these buildings, to maintain consistency across all my roofs. The fur in these packs I will use in some other terrain project.

That's it for part 1 of the review. The buildings are well made and well packaged and go together quickly, though I do think that the instructions could be more informative on the roofing material. On the whole, they come highly recommended. In part 2 I will be looking at roofing, painting and comparing them with alternatives, hopefully some time next week. Timeline Miniatures Buildings Review Part 1

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Easy to make wargaming fields

I made these fields with Saga games in mind, but they could be used in any historical setting and maybe even in fantasy scenarios. They were simplicity itself to construct, made from a very cheap door mat, the cheaper (and thus thinner) the better. If you live in the UK and have a Wilkinsons nearby, a single mat will cost you the grand sum of 88p. A brown mat would be ideal, but I had to buy a grey one, it was either that or blue.

The mat has a backing of rubber/felt and is easy to cut into smaller sections with scissors. Then I quickly added some brown, cheap craft paints from my "terrain box" - full of bottles of discounted acrylic paints I use on most of my scenery. Freshly ploughed field done. Yes, the furrows are precise and straight, unlikely in the dark ages. And yes, the unplanted fields do just look like bits of carpet when viewed like this, but you have to imagine them with hedges, huts and maybe a few cattle roaming around.

Some of the fields I painted over the tops of the furrows with pva glue and then sprinkled with various colours of flock, to represent different crops. It's obviously early spring and they are just sprouting, or late autumn and they are freshly cut. When I turned over the mats and tapped off the excess, the flock stuck in the depressions, possibly because the paint was still tacky or maybe it just gets lodged in the fibres. The simple solution I found was to use the stick end of the brush to run down in the deeper areas, to remove most of the excess. One nice side effect of this process is that some of the fibres stand up and with the flock look like tiny plants, a bit too tiny for my camera to capture but you can see that they make a pretty decent impression of crops in fields.

One door mat made all these fields, enough to sustain a small hamlet I reckon. There's certainly more than enough here for a typical game of Saga. Now I just have to make a few hedges and other boundary markers to give them a little more polish. This is my complete collection of wooden boundary markers from my Warhammer collection, I need lots more so another cheap solution is required. I have an idea involving another door mat, hopefully that will yield results in the near future. Easy to make wargaming fields

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