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Last week my wife and I started a Ghost Archipelago campaign; for anyone interested I already wrote up a battle report here. Unfortunately that game showed me just how small my fantasy terrain collection really is. The prospect of playing a campaign on a half filled table didn't sit well, so I got to work. A few hours over a couple of nights yielded good results. A couple of winter pieces for regular Frostgrave even made it into the mix. Unfortunately I'm out of snow at the moment so they're not quite done.

I have been wanting to build tree bases of several trees each for use at home. (Conventions will probably require individual trees for transport reasons.). I finally got around to starting a few test bases today. This one is approximately done, and uses a base with some extra scenic materials started at a workshop at Gencon last year. The next two are in progress. I need to paint the rocks, add some flock, and then glue down the trees. While I would expect that 10-15 bases will be wanted for at-home gaming, three will have to do for now, and should feature in the current digression project, an attempt to paint/build everything new for a small-ish skirmish game.

Here are 4 twisted wire trees I made. Three of them use moss from a craft store package, one used Woodland Scenics foliage. They all use Vallejo Earth Texture, Woodland Scenics scrubery, and Army Painter Lowland Shrubs. Here is is an average wizard under a tree for size reference:

Some time ago I bought a whole lot of plastic trees from China to make wargaming terrain with. I've finally got around to making a start on basing some of them. The bases are 3mm MDF, the brown forest floor is real dead leaves munched up in a little ten dollar coffee grinder, and the grass is old-school sawdust flock. Lurking in under the trees behind the Lanchester armoured car is a 15mm British wireless operator, but so good is his camouflage that you can't really see him. They're not the most realistic terrain pieces ever made, but considering that the trees cost me about fifteen cents each, and everything else was basically free, I'm pretty happy with the results. This is about a fifth of the whole bunch, so I've still got a bit of work ahead of me.

So my gaming group is trying to relaunch some 40K interest I've been tasked with providing some greenery to the table. I've enlisted the help of my 8 year old as he's very keen to start playing himself and we've raided the local Ikea and a pet store and set to work. Thus far, we broken our purchases down and everything has been washed. I was going to paint up a bunch of them using some different colours to represent alien plant-life but my son doesn't like the idea so at least the initial ones will be "normal" looking. I still plan on hitting them with a little airbrushed green/yellow/brown to add some pop. Tonight will be some prototyping of combinations and I'll probably cut out some random shapes of MDF to use as bases. I was going to use some of my base boss loot but... Thanks for looking.

This was a thing I did for my girlfriend for Christmas. She always refer to herself as a sloth because she likes to sleep, and is a fan of Sid from Ice Age. :P The base is far to big to fit in my photo-case, though:

So... I've finally gotten started on the ReaperCon theme entry for 2015. This is where we are and well... It's a mess. LOL! I've got quite a bit of work to do, not including painting. This project is largely experimental and we'll have to see where it goes.... Hmmm....

So, one of the local A.C. Moore stores is going out of business - a fact I didn't find out until they were on the last leg of the journey (and everything was 70% off) - so the place was pretty picked over. Still, I found some decent stuff for terrain building - something I haven't, in the past, been all that interested in, but with some recent sales of GW terrain at various stores, my interest in keeping a single-use gaming room (and attendant regalia) in the house, etc. - I figured I'd pick some up, and scored some trees, ground cover, lichen, etc. from Creative Time (the trees are a little short for 28mm, but still about 12' tall in scale - so, not too bad?), and, well, a bunch of stuff like this - Now, this stuff is way, way too tall for 28mm - unless it's the grandaddy of all mutant redwood forests - but the great thing about weird plastic foliage (intended for who-knows-what originally) is that it's, well, plastic (although often with wires in it, apparently, to act as bendable armatures). And plastic reacts very well to knives (and wires can be yanked out with pliers...). So after a little bit of elbow grease, I ended up with these - Which are a very suitably weird band of mutant trees for my Weirdworld/Heavy Metal/Epic inspired campaign, I think. Except, of course, that few of them will stand up on their own... they need to be based. And I'd rather not waste good plastic bases on terrain. Especially since I don't think they'd stand up - too top heavy. (sigh). Okay, fine. Much as I normally dislike using washers as bases (it's a pet peeve, not really explainable), off to the local Home Depot it is. The acquisition of a couple of dozen washers (in various sizes) later, I run into another problem - normal superglue/hobby glue doesn't cut it - the bond is too fragile. Solution - Gorilla Glue! The bond is flexible enough, and strong enough, and the slight bit of foaming acts as a little bit of a filler/base build up. Only problem is I can only really set up one or two at a time, because of the need to prop things - officially, they should be bound together tightly, but the couple I've got done so far have been fine with just the pressure of the tree. And so - (random druid is random, and standing in for Sir Forscale...) Next step - basing. I'm far from an expert at this (quite the opposite, actually - most of the time, I just paint the base a neutral grey, or a basic "sandy base with green highlighting" on broccoli bases) - but I'm figuring a couple of layers of ballast/sand, and then either lichen or ground cover on top of those?

Well, Jazzy primed her animals today, and I've sanded the base down all nice and smooth. This one should take off in all of its (attempted) tree/bush/grass/fairy ring/animal/sandy glory! Maybe even before the Bladesinger is done.

Okay! I guess this is my first official sculpt! It's not a person, but it's a tree, and I'm happy with my first attempt. For the next go round (if I need another live oak) I'll use a heavier gauge wire to get more windiness in the branches. I wanted them a bit more crooked, but I think the lighter gauge and my inexperience ended up in a flat crown. Anyhoo, the sculpting portion is over and now all that's left is to prep (lots of flakies need to come off), prime, paint, and figure out how to stick foliage on here... To avoid redundancy (ahem) I'm posting a link to the project this tree is for. It has more detail on the tree (and pics!) and other parts than is necessary for this post. You can see that project here.

The trees are from Woodland Scenics and the stones are made of quartz shards. Hope you like them!

VIGNETTE...Little Red Riding Hood & The Big Bad Wolf... NOTE...I wanted to do a private collection vignette of Red Riding Hood & The Wolf along the Grimm Fairy Tales art line...I could not find a figure that fit my mind eye view of Red Riding Hood...so this is what I came up with in the conversion building of this vignette...I think that it is cute, straight forward and comes close to what I had in my artist mind eye...I like it...I hope that you all like it also. PHOTO 1 & 2...Shows the back part of the vignette clearly...I used the Grenadier Troll (Horrors of the Marsh # 2010b)...circa (1983)...and painted it up like a werewolf. PHOTO 3...Shows the figure that I used for Red Riding Hood (Reaper #50176 - Sugar, Anime Heroine)...the red cape (scratch built out of sheet lead)...pic-nic basket scratch built out of plastic parts. PHOTOS 4 - 9...Show the completed vignette with the details (walking stick, cape, basket and landscape added).

Let's add some stuff to the Terrain forum. Here are a couple of tree terrain models: a fallen tree and a group of chopped trees. Both of them are easy terrain models made with real wood, just glued to the bases and inked to add texture. The fallen tree is based on an old CD (an easy and non-bendable base). The chopped trees may be used on their own as an ex-forest or added to a bigger non-chopped forest to add variety.