[sg, ds] modeling - tree bases

Hi,

With the recent discussions on tree bases, I thought I'd toss in this
idea.

I did up "forest bases" by purchasing a pile of roughly 9"x12" sheets of
dark green felt from a local craft store.  These were really inexpensive
(maybe $0.25 each).  I cut them into a variety of curved (kidney
bean-ish)
shapes.  Then I stuck flock down all over them, leaving a thin border of
the dark green felt showing (appx 1/4").  The flock colour was as close
as
I could find to the ground mat I use (GeoHex standard green ground mat).

Take a look at:

http://www.stargrunt.ca/acj/felt_mat_1.htm

for a few example pics I put up.

The trees I use are similar to the type sold by Games Workshop and a
number
of railroad terrain companies.	These are the wire-stiffened trees with
pre-applied folliage (similar to a brush bristles, covered with flock).
I've used Woodland Scenic trees, where you have to stick on the folliage
yourself, but these are a pain.  There are some good tricks for getting
them to stay assembled (like spraying them with hairspray), but they
still
take lots of time to assemble.	They make great burned out forest
though.
Anyway, I purchased several bags of the large round flat plastic bases
that
GW sells, and stuck one tree to a base.  The bases were then painted and
flocked with the same flock as the felt.

Now, I have a big pile of tree areas, and I put 2 or 3 trees onto each
one
during a game.	The edge of the tree base is the edge of the forest. 
Not
having the trees actually attached means I can move them out of the way
if
someone wants to put figures there, and packing them is really simple. 
The
felt goes in a bag, the trees get stuffed in a different bag, and the
whole
set goes in a box.  

The nice thing about using flocked felt like this is that you can bend
it
over terrain features like hills, if you want.	Certainly I've played on
uneven tables in the past (I'm sure eveyone has at one time or another)
and
having "flexible" features like this makes things a bit easier.

I did the same thing for a river, using blue felt.  Worked quite well,
though the river itself is a wee bit on the blue side...

Anyway, method has a couple of advantages over the
stick-trees-to-a-board
method (which I've also used in the past):  it is fast and it is
inexpensive.

Also, setup and take down are quick, and both the trees on a single base
and the felt mats are quite durable and stand up well to the trials
wargaming terrain has to endure.  Oh, and they're relatively thin, which
keeps things from getting to lumpy on the table.  And they don't hurt
figs
that fall over.

-Adrian

***************************************

Adrian Johnson
adrian@stargrunt.ca
http://www.stargrunt.ca