Monday, January 19, 2015

Can't See the Forest for the Trees

     One of the main reasons I'm into wargaming is the love of toy soldiers. I tend to spend most of my time on the toy soldiers, neglecting the terrain of the game. I still haven't come up with the right playing field.  Do I use hexes or squares? I like the Heroscape terrain, however it leaves little room for scenery.  I have limited space to set up my game so the field cannot be too large. Somehow I still haven't found the right balance to make an attractive game board like other gamers seem to achieve.

   The trees I have been using are from a toy called "Toobs". They are made of plastic and are already painted.  I mounted them on plastic squares as they tip quite easily. On the Heroscape terrain they tend to take up a lot of room.  However, I recently bought some new trees and bushes on Ebay. They are lead so they have weight to them. They are also top heavy, requiring them to be based. However, they are smaller than the Toobs trees so hopefully will work on the Heroscape better.
A photo of a Peter Laing figure next to the new trees, with a bush in front. The trees were already primed white. These trees  have been given a wash of black paint.

Two trees that I have painted after the black undercoating.

A "forest" of the new trees.

One of the lead trees, with two "Toobs" trees on each flank.

A lead tree and "Toobs" tree side by side on Heroscape terrain. I put one of the base edges along one of the hex sides to show how much room the tree base takes up. I think one problem of space on my game boards has just been solved!

A view from an earlier game using "Toobs" trees.

4 comments:

  1. I think that the new trees are a much better size for wargaming than your existing ones. Can you find any more of them if you need them?

    All the best,

    Bob

    ReplyDelete
  2. The more I look at them the better they fit in with my current plans. Unfortunately, I do not know the manufacturer of the trees. I did get quite a few of them. Perhaps in the future I will try a mold.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I use 1:300 (or model railway Z scale) trees with my Portable Wargame terrain and those seem to work well. There is a Chinese company on e-Bay called Ethersell88 that makes model trees in a huge range of scales and export worldwide post free. The prices are very reasonable and the trees are okay. I used a load of them for the CWS Siege of Rome display game (all of the Orange trees outside of the Villa Corsini came from them)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I will have to keep that company in mind. I looked up what they had and the prices are decent. If nothing else I could use them with my model trains.

    ReplyDelete