Currently I have a few forest-themed battle maps, but they never seem to look right to me, and lack versatility. Likewise, using realistic plastic trees wargame-style means you end up reaching past them to move minis, and inevitably knocking over the trees left and right. In general, I find using 3D tree models on the table for RPG's a poor solution, and have always wanted a better option for forest encounters.
Now obviously, if I'm bothering to post this, I must have come up with something, right? Indeed, I was cruising my local craft store, and found a line of garden-themed resin miniatures. They have little mushroom houses, little swing sets for resin fairies, and other such fripperies unworthy of the seething masculinity for which this site is so famous (they're not dolls, MOM!)
But one item that caught my eye was this cute little set of a table and chairs made from mossy stumps. And while I'm sure someone will put these to adorable use in a little garden diorama, for me, I saw the answer to my forest encounter dilemma.
It occurred to me that these stumps were just the right diameter to represent trees in 28mm, the smaller ones fitting neatly into a single grid square to represent a medium sized tree, while the larger one (the 'table') occupying a 2"x 2" square for size large. By using only the stumps, I could easily show where the trees were without having the upper sections in the way. And as simple shapes, I could easily create a one-sided push mold of them and cast as many of the things as I needed.
So I picked up a single set, since I was intending to cast more as needed. I also saw this other, lone stump, and figured I could add it in for variety, once I snapped off the little branch at the top to aid in easy casting.
The first problem I had to overcome was the fake moss. While it looked nice, when you got close up (kind of a big thing in the world of miniatures,) it just looked like green plastic hairs. And they would definitely cause trouble when making molds, so they had to go. Washing off the glue was not an option, so I went for the nuclear option:
Pure acetone will strip nearly everything, and I don't (DON'T) recommend it for softer plastics. But these stumps were cast from good, strong resin, so I felt they would hold up well. Indeed, after a brief soak, the fake plastic moss and the adhesive that affixed it came off easily with a little toothbrush action. So I now had 3 stripped stumps with crisp detail, all ready for molding.
Of course, there are tons of options for making molds, and perhaps I will make an entry soon about the various ways of doing so, but for now I will just say that for this particular application, I used this:
This is a two-part molding compound which is not my favorite. I've had questionable results with it in previous applications, but I realized that for this particular use it would work fine. So I mixed up the goo and pressed it all over the stumps, giving me three decent molds:
They were a little thin in places, but I figured they should hold up well enough to crank out a small forest.
But what to use to cast in these fine molds? As with molding compounds, there are dozens of options with varying qualities, but I went with three different materials to see what worked best.
To start I used some superfine white Milliput I had lying around. Now, I had originally picked up this product for use as a mini sculpting compound, but I just never liked it (that's a post for another day.) This gave an okay stump (although pricey,) but perhaps because I did not mix it thoroughly enough, but there was a sticky patch on the top that never really dried out. So this was not my favorite option.
Then I used my go-to material for casting; hardware store repair putty. There are many different varieties, under many different names, but I find the Fix-It Stick by Oatey to be the most reliable and easy to acquire in my area. It is nice and cheap (around seven bucks for the tube seen in the photo,) and dries quickly and rock hard, after which it can be sanded. One note on sanding: in my house this product is known as 'urine putty,' because the chemical smell of it as it is curing is reminiscent of old cat pee. When sanding, this smell is released into the air, and you may be unpopular for a little while. But the results are reliable, and make a good, nearly indestructible product. But I wanted to see if I could get my project done even cheaper, so I headed to the craft store.
This is an air-drying clay by Fimo. It's not standard pottery clay (although the color makes it look like it,) and it is extremely light. It is also as messy as standard clay, and left little clay bits all over the molds, but these were easily shaken out. The real problem was that it took several days to dry all the way through so that I could demold it. Once done, it was very lightweight, which wasn't really what I was looking for, but the detail was okay. The single biggest positive is the price. The package was a few bucks with coupon, and should give me a good-sized forest. For this reason alone, I have decided to use it exclusively going forward.
Next I "black-bombed" them all with some old spray primer I had lying around (I don't use it any more, having switched to brush-on primers and black gesso.) They all looked more or less the same at that point, and now it was time to paint.
I used plain old craft paint, in several layers. I wanted to have them all look more or less uniform, so I used the same color scheme on all of them. This also helped speed up the process, allowing me to "assembly line" it. Once they had all been base coated, I washed them with Agrax Earthshade and Voila!
Already a good-sized forest. I can bang out a dozen or so more fast and cheap, and be able to cover the table in as large and dense a forest as I could possibly need. I'm even thinking of sculpting up a size huge tree (3" x 3") and mold some of those.
When I get the time, I will add a few details here and there such as clumps of moss patches of shelf fungi to give them some individuality while still maintaining the overall consistency. But they are ready to use just as they are now. Here's how they look on the table with some minis:
I realize the picture quality is poor, but it's late. Here we see a party of (very) old friends wandering through the forest as they are set upon by a goblin patrol and their giant spider. The trees are stable, and heavy enough not to slide around when the table is jostled (I may apply some liquid rubber like Plasti Dip or FlexSeal to aid in their non-slip properties) You can see where the lines of sight are broken and so forth.
I realize many may prefer full trees, and I can respect that. But for my money (and not much of that I am proud to say,) this is simply the finest solution for RPG's I have come across. Hopefully, some of you may find it of use as well.
Post Script- While at the craft store, I took a picture of another product from the same line, which could be a slightly less cool, but still reasonably effective version of this idea:
They are little wooden discs, and they have the outer bark ad inner tree rings, so they still look like trees, even if they would be much shorter and more irregularly sized. But at seven bucks for a whole forest, it wouldn't suck. Slap a layer of liquid rubber on one side, and game on!
