Friday, October 19, 2018

A Treatise on Pine Trees

In anticipation of the Dux Britanniarum game that I'm running, I decided that I need more terrain. While Dux Brit's terrain rules typically leave a lot of open terrain, I personally prefer a more realistic, densely populated table. I want to see forests that look like forests, villages that look like villages, and crops that look like crops. As you can see below, my previous game looked pretty nice, but it was by no means loaded with terrain.


With this in mind, I set out to make my vision for a beautiful table a reality. I've made trees for an orchard, a church and walls to contain it, a bunch of bushes, some thickets, some more buildings, and soon a vineyard. However, one thing that I didn't have was pine trees. While there are many types of pine trees, I decided to stick with only a couple different types: the fuller, Christmas tree style ones and the sparser more rounded spruce trees.



I knew that I wanted a lot of them, so I decided to get a bunch of cheaply made trees from China, via Ali Express. I figured that once the crappy flock was taken off of them, they could be made into something useful and more realistic.



So I promptly tossed them in a cup of water for a day or two and scraped off the junk flock, which left me with this (Very Messy! Do this into a box or garbage can!).



Not there yet, obviously. So I then trimmed them up with some scissors, really just hacking away at them to give them some more realistic shape (Note: This, again, is pretty messy, so work over a garbage can or have a broom handy or the grown-up in your like, in this case my girlfriend, will make you clean your room). Even the densest pine trees have those kind of under-cuts from branches, so I set about making them a reasonable approximation of what a pine tree looks like. Here they are after their trip to the barbershop.



Not content with that, I needed to get the base tree a more woody color, so I based them and sprayed them a dark brown. I typically go with a metal or plastic primer from Krylon or Rustoleum. They are cheap and pretty effective. After the dark brown, I then give them a dusting with a tan spray paint to "gray" them up a little bit. As most of you probably know by now, trees are actually brown most of the time, they are gray with a hint of brown. Here they are after their painting and dusting.



After that, the final bit. I just need to apply the static grass to the branches and base the tree. I won't bother with telling anyone how to base them, because I just glue a couple shades of static grass to my terrain. It's not the cheapest way to make terrain, but I prefer the look over flock, which looks too much like a golf course to me. For applying the static grass to the tree itself, I just used a cheap 2" hog bristle brush (My go to terrain brush!) and brushed on some pva. you can water it down slightly to save some money, but with how much I'm going to handle these trees, I wanted that stuff locked down! Once the glue was on, it was just a matter of using my brand new flock box from War World Scenics (Same place I got the flock) and choosing my desired color. I went with a couple different colors for some variation, not all pines are the same and some are dead! The flock box really helps nail the splayed needle effect that a lot of trees have, but if you want more flat needles you just need to skip the flock box and apply the static grass by hand. Here are some pictures of my finished results with a Footsore Late Roman converted to a Gondorian officer and also a couple shots of them on my Killing Fields terrain mat.








So that's pine trees! I'm going to try to double the number of trees I have on the table by the game, hopefully both pines and deciduous and I'm going to try to get in some variation with some smaller trees, bushes, and different types of trees. The added benefit? All of these pine trees costed me less than 15 USD! Until next time!

Friday, October 12, 2018

Men of the West and General Update

Well, I've gone and done it again. It's been about a month and a half since I last posted. This time, it's been due to the family needing help work during apple season, so most of my spare time has been taken up working at the orchard or laying exhausted on the couch at the end of the day. I have been doing some serious terrain work, transforming super cheap trees I found on AliExpress into something decent by stripping off the terrible flocking, basing them, trimming them up when necessary, and applying flock or static grass as needed. I've also almost finished the main objective for my Dux Britanniarum game at Fall In, the Late Roman church from Warbases.




I share the opinion with some of you out there that mdf buildings are great, but they can be seriously bland and even bad looking without doing a little work. I believe that mdf is best when used as a shell or foundation for the finished model. They give you your base to start from, allowing you to focus on making them look good. After building the church, I applied spackle/filler to the model's walls and smoothed it out with wet fingers. The roof tiles are laser cut card from Warbases as well, which really bring it to life and cover up the faux pantile etched onto the roof. From there, I also scored a wood grain in all the boards forming the doors as well as grooves between the stones on the archway. From there, it's just a matter of painting it up, which I'm almost done with.

In this picture, you will also see what passes for my workbench storage area. I have a nice big corner desk, but I'm forced to have two computers on it for work, meaning that the only space I have on it is my actual painting and work space. Right now, for all of my deciduous trees, I'm waiting on a shipment of rubberized horse hair for the foliage, along with dark green static grass for most of my conifers. I'm pretty pleased with my results so far, but Ive got a lot of work to go before Fall In. I'd like at least double my number of trees and add about five more buildings for the village by the church, inhabited by monks and other good Catholics. I'd like to try to make a small vineyard as well, and having learned that grapes were typically grown on freestanding poles at this point in time, this is even more achievable than before. But enough talking, here are some pics of my projects, with some trees midway and some finished off.

Before
And After





Before
 And After

Nestled in the pine grove, you will see another, yes another project that I've picked up. Thankfully, there wont be as much purchasing for this one. I've decided to make a Gondorian force for Dux Gondorum and SoTK, whenever it comes out. I envision a Byzantine/Late Roman feel to Gondor and Arnor respectively and I feel that Footsore's ranges will best serve as a base for my ambitions in Middle Earth, especially once Bill Thornhill finishes the Huns, who will serve double duty as Huns and Easterlings. Right now, the plan is Late Romans/Byzantines for the twin kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor, Early Saxons and Goths for Rohan, Oathmark Goblins and some GW stuff for orcs, Vikings and the Gripping Beast Rus for men of Dorwinian, Conqueror Dwarves, and Footsore and Gripping Beast Arabs and Sassanids for Harad.

And here a picture of my cat Taps in a bow tie, the consummate gentleman.



Until next time.