"How many trees?" Topic

So I am doing a Forrest game tomorrow hopefully.

It's a whole table of woodland the patches are just to indicate areas impassable to any vehicle.

However despite there being slightly in excess of 60 trees it looks very sparse.

WARNING – this photo contains an unpainted miniature, and hence viewer discretion is advised as it may cause offense.

So how may trees do you own and how many would you like to own if you had the storage space, money and or time?

Actually that grey vehicle does not look that bad. Perhaps I'm overdoing the painting. Trouble is both side grey would be confusing (fog of War but perhaps too much) and they don't seem to do a Karki filament ;-).

Someone suggested to me felt patches and I had 2 trees to pin it down and shows they are wood forest

14bore -

That's what I do, but my terrain is optimized for portability and being easy to use and understand. Can't really hold a candle to other folks' "fancy" terrain.

I wouldn't look at that and think "forest." Visually, it needs more trees, at least to my eye; maybe 3 or 4 per hex— especially if the tree areas are meant to block line of sight for the various units. Right now you've got a lot of open space, making it appear that units could pretty much shoot or move almost anywhere.

But I'm confused by your statement of "patches." Do you mean that any hex which holds a tree is impassible? I ask this because it appears that some trees are located on the shared corner of three hexes (lower left, three brownish hexes). Would all three of these be impassible? Or are the "patches" the brownish hexes?

I'm assuming, of course, that the hexes are functional elements of the game regarding range and movement and location.

You can never have too many trees.

How many trees? Yes

Over done a few "forest" games and take much the same approach. I scatter all the trees I own over the area in various densities.

I've got two boxfuls of smaller trees, around 120, and another box of palm trees, so another 50 or so. Around half the regular trees are double based (so there are actually nearly 200 trees). I made a lot if them myself.

If your asking, you need a lot more. No really, you need a lot more.

One can NEVER have too many trees or fences!

I disagree. The number of trees is fine. It is about perspective. If you were doing a snap shot diorama then Todd would be right and more trees are needed. If miniature gaming, then it depends. If the board is mixed terrain then more trees are needed for a tree line.
If the entire board is woods then this is enough trees.I once played in a convention show game where the entire board was jungle. It was in Vietnam rules play test. The entire board was jungle but open to allow ease of miniature movement. The impassable bogs, trails/ roads, and open clearings are marked.
So do what you can control and allows flow.

I found this guy's blog: link

I like his final result of the two trees with heavy foliage on a long skinny base. I think that would look good on your set up— there's plenty of space to move the miniatures around, but the heavy foliage effect creates that visual LoS element that says "you can't see through here." And with two trees on the base, you get a lot of forest without increasing the number of things to transport and set up.

I have 250 trees or more, I have them in groups of 2 or 3 trees. A cost-effective way, to limit sighting and maneuvering is to get a couple of bags of lichen and create bushes with them near trees.

I have at least 1,000 trees laying around. You can never have too many…..

"How many trees?" like "how many miniatures?" I consider to be an unhelpful question without relation to scale and manner of wargaming. Also, people who know how many trees they have don't have enough trees, so the results are distorted.

When I find a 54mm tree, it gets tossed in the "54mm Terrain" plastic tub in the garage.
28mm trees fill a tub 16"x 24" x 12".
1/72 trees fill two or three gallon bags in the garage.
I make it about 2-3 gallons of 6-10mm scale.
2mm doesn't have trees: it has wooded areas.

For practical purposes, the objective is "as many trees as I need for credible woodland at the maximum table size for that scale--6x8 board in 54mm or 28mm, 3x3 board in 1/72 down to 6mm, and 2x2 board for 2mm. (The 2mm "Big Battle" WWII needs a 6x4 table with 6" hexes and I'm currently cranking out 2 wooded hexes a day.) I think I'm OK except for 54mm.

Anyone more curious than that can make an appointment and do his own count.

Unpainted AFVs? UshCha, we must introduce you to the wonders of spray paint cans.

But as regards the immediate problem, TimePortal has a point. I think the UshCha-level solution is not more trees but a woodland cloth clearly showing the wooded area. If the whole board is woodland, you need a woodland ground cloth. A charity shop sheet and a couple of cans of spray paint should do you. You could put a few trees on top the cloth, but they wouldn't be important.

Robert +1 on the mat use. My wife before she died had a fabric store, so a cloth with paint to accent is good idea.

You have created a beautiful park, but not a forest.

You can have enough trees, but you can never have too many.

I base most of mine on old CDs and similar, then place them next to each other on the table. The whole CD is considered part of the forest.

Bunkermeister

Someone suggested to me felt patches and I had 2 trees to pin it down and shows they are wood forest

Interesting idea, I will need to check if I can find felt of a suitable shade (medium or dark green?) and thickness.

Should also buy more trees at some point…

Griefbringer, I use light brown felt for dead leaves.

I probably have 30+ trees, enough to cover a number of small patches of felt, but not enough for the entire board.

Parzival The whole board is woodland, the patches are just impassible bits.

The whole board with a base cloth is not useful for us. While our rules are analouge, we still use rulers etc. However we do use the hex system for map referenceing hiddern units quickly and accurately. Hence covering them wholescale is not a useable solution.

I'm Upset *grin" not a single moan about them being 2D!

After I did this board I did consider more trees. However I decided against it. Large tabl;e sized forrests are not a common scenario for us so too much work for too little gain. Also the trees are 2 part, tree and base so are "assembled" and placed. This is done to save vital space.

However the other reason for no more is placement, it takes a while to place 60 plus trees and take them down. To do better woulkd need say nearly 200 trees, that is far too much effort afetr all, for me its the game that counts, art is a low priority.

Normally the ptches you see are angel hair, we use a brown version for woodland bases on more convetional games. You can't paint it without spoiling its drape capability. No brown on this board, as it would be confusing as we would inadvertently start thinging limited forrest not whole board.

Why angel hair? Well its quick and translucent so close up you can see the hex below so the map function of the hex is not lost.

Seems like I am in the middle, more trees tham some than some but less than the few with hundreds.

For 1/72 I dispence with model trees too bulky for me. Instead I use tree shaped card, basicaly like the smoke in this picture but a diffrent colour.

I went 2D plastic instead as the card ones are a bit light at 1/144 so fall down too often and need a heavy base (3d printed holder with coins glued underneath for weight). Again typicaly on an angel hair base.

Mister Natural wrote:

"The purpose of terrain in a Wargame is to frustrate both sides.
If you don't like that, play chess."

Brilliant, if just a little sassy! :)))

Ush, perhaps you want to dial back your scenarios to reflect the terrain kit you buy/make – or get more.

This opinion just based on that old adage that if you can't do BIG, you do small really well instead. The end result then is you HAVE done something really well.

"I'm Upset *grin" not a single moan about them being 2D!"

We all saw it, UshCha. And we all knew that was one of the reasons why it looked so "sparse" that even you noticed. We were just being polite. If you make yourself obnoxious about it, people won't be so polite next time.

As repeated above: you can never have enough trees. Unfortunately, it is simultaneously possible to have too many trees – storage space and setup/teardown time matter.

My solution to making wooded areas look wooded is a combination of techniques. I do this:

I think the UshCha-level solution is not more trees but a woodland cloth clearly showing the wooded area.

Then I put some trees down on each wooded area, and fill in the gaps between trees with lichen. In 15mm and smaller, the lichen looks tree-like enough to accomplish the visual aesthetic. Since all the trees/lichen are just 3D decorations, they move aside as the troops move through, and the ground area of the wood/forest is still demarcated by the ground cloth. Lichen is compressible, durable, and easy to store in large quantities.

About a decade ago, I decided I wanted to speed up the forest setup/teardown, so I started mounting my trees 3-6 on an irregulaly-shaped blob of sheet styrene, then decorating the plastic with forest duff and lichen. Now I can put down/lift larger chunks of forest than single trees.

Side note: I use Woodland Scenics trees, which glue together with styrene cement really strongly, which is why I also use styrene sheet as the base for these blobs of forest. The trees aren't coming off. Meanwhile, all the trees I made in the 1990s continue to peel themselves off the metal washers that make them stand up…

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I did a whole-table forest like the OP once, and for that I took a different approach. I used a bunch of "rocky field" blobs I had from a previous era of gaming to mark the clearings, then just sprinkled trees and lichen in patches around the rest of the table. (For aesthetic reasons, I also made a plant barrier along each roadside and clearing edge, but that's optional.) If the whole table is a forest, it's the clearings that are terrain features.

You're doing the opposite, with impassible areas, but the principle applies. The impassible areas just need extra-dense terraining instead of open grass/bushes/rocks.

- Ix

My to do list is to create a forest for 10mm that is essentially passable but not "combatable"— units can only fight in or out at the edges. Otherwise units nominally "within" the forest can neither see or be seen by units outside the forest. To move through it, the unit is placed at a different edge. (This is for Warmaster rules.)

My plan is to use "reindeer moss" (lichen) as the forest. I'm going to cut some large base areas, paint and flock the edges only to a distance slightly larger than a base's width (20mm), and then just glue the lichen in mounds to fill the center of the base. Visually, it will be a "forest" and the tactical reality that it blocks line of sight and hampers movement will be obvious. I also plan to cut the bases into round curves that can "fit" within each other, to create larger expanses of forest, or smaller wooded areas as needed.

I have about 20 'shoeboxes' of trees for 15mm. and I'm making/repairing more. I can cover a 3x4 foot area with just trees.

Some of these ideas are way to moddler oriented for me.
Saber 3ft by 4ft you are not even getting started ;-). I was out in Australia and in places from the road there were miles of unbroken woodland. But it is interesting to see how you approach things diffrently.

FlyXwire – compromise a game for looks? Unthinkable for us to do that ;-). At a push like the last scenarion there were unpainted models (well only one turned up so far); we never even noticed.

Parzival one of the gains of angel hair, for normal sized wood bases is it is so thin you can overlap it and get larger areas. I could cut hex shapes and I do have a few bits but smooth curves tend to "washout" at least some of the "Hexiness" of the battlefield.

robert piepenbrin – You are allowed to make artistic comments, but most of the time I may not take them too seriously. One gain for 2D and hence 2 part trees is that they can have alternate bases that means they can stand on slopes and not look stupid. It does help that being a standard Hex system the slopes are consistent. I did look at a 3D printed variable angle ajusting base but that was too large and complex as far as I was concerned. A random mix of 3 diffrent orientaion sloped basesd means that not all the trees are oriented the same way on the slope and so does work well enough for my frugal tastes in art.

The game is going well and to be honest I was suprised but even at the density shown, leaning over the full 3ft (its a 6ft by 6ft table) was a bit awkuard, higher densities would be worse. So the density we used is actaully at about the right level for this type of all board woodland scenario.

Who knew there was do much about trees.

Yes, because terrain is a huge part of any visual battle problem presented.

Again, I'll quote Mister Natural -

"The purpose of terrain in a Wargame is to frustrate both sides. If you don't like that, play chess."

As we see it, with this game board pic of yours, it's flat, has the look of layered paper, and the trees in question are a 2D visual compromise you've made.

There's plenty of references, like long-serving gaming conventions, that can show how great game terrain draws player interest. Terrain excellence is a plus, it adds to the gamer's experience, and it can work to better draw interest to your game.

You can argue all you want against the experience that sharp-looking terrain brings to the tabletop, but it's a hollow argument.

FlyXwire – Clearly we are working from far different standpoints. Trust me I do not want to attract players to this game, it's not a hollow argument, its vital reality. It's set up in my loft, other folks are not wanted, this is our game for us, hangers on would detract from the game which requires all our concentration. Whittling overmuch about terrain is like whittling about unpainted figures, it's all for us, a massively second order to the game play. To be fair when I started this thread it did seem that more trees would be a net benefit, save for the pain of printing them and placing them. Having started the game it became rapidly apparent that more trees woulds adversely effect game play as moving the models in the center of the board would be even more problematic and time consuming, this I now realize, far out weighs the small artistic benefit for more trees.

This game is wholly and un-apolageticaly unsuitable for any convention, it requires a quite detailed understanding of the strategies associated with this type of action and understanding of the rules and timings as already I have had one delay through inappropriate traffic management, however not uncommon in the real world.

The terrain is on the simple side, although not without some precedent in the real world: this is at least in part to conform to KISS requirements as it's out of our normal standard of game and is pushing our abilities to act credibly to our limits.

Perhaps it is worthy of a separate thread, serious game or serious art, the two may not be mutually exclusive but there are be some serious shades of gray. This game already fails on art as far as some would be concerned, as very few models are in play so far despite many more being available. Again the number of trees has shown to be somewhat dependent on the game requirements, not just a supply and art issue.

UshCha, in your position I'd strongly consider what I believe are called 2.5D trees--two flat trees slotted to be stored flat and inserted one into the other for use on the battlefield. Minimizes storage space but doesn't disappear when viewed from the wrong look angle. They can be made of paper and cost approximately nothing.

Ush, this is a well-explained sentence on your part, and I understand your approach/goal -

"Perhaps it is worthy of a separate thread, serious game or serious art, the two may not be mutually exclusive but there are be some serious shades of gray."

There's absolute utility in such efficiency, or of going lean (there's times when I've aimed for "lean" too, even for the convention games – to help keep the terrain kit manageable).

If you are looking for slight visual improvement, then maybe consider Robert's thread above, otherwise you're good to go, as you've already achieved your goal here.

FRlyXwire – That is a very interesting statement.
Very early on probably a good 20+ years ago when we were into Stargrunt II ayt 1/172 and the early days of fold flat for we did do a convention game where the whole board was a wood and we did use crude card cruciform trees. We got shouted at by one punter as he was not happy that he had walked past our display woodland 3 times before realized that they were not real trees. He felt this was an affront, we were polite but considered they had done their job very well from a game perspective. Thus when we came to 1/144, cruciform trees were one option. The trees would have been printable and slot together so it was a viable option. As at the time we were not considering the bizarre nature of a complete Forrest we opted for 2D for several reasons.

1) This is specific to 1/144: obviously the trees at the base need to have a spread at the base to support the tree trunk. To make it robust I considered the base would need to be at least 2mm tall, (This assumes just 2 piece trees like the 1/72 versions from decades ago). This is close to 1/6th of a figure height (this is the 1/144 board we are on). That looked to be unacceptably large given our figure bases are only 0.6mm thick, personally 3 or 4mm model bases are totally unacceptable at any scale at 1/44 utterly so.
2) Make the trees a 3 part system for storage, two tree pieces plus a base for stability. This was rejected on the basis it would take too long to assemble cruciforms and then clip a base on.
3) For more normal use I considered that I could have more 2D trees say 3 or 4 2D trees vs 2 Cruciforms. 2D are faster to put up, less demanding than slotting two cruciform parts ("trees") together then clipping to a base. Furthermore it was my contention (you can debate it hotly), that 4 2D trees look better than 2 cruciform trees; for normal small woodland areas the tree density we use is far higher than on this unique table.

4) the simplicity of 2D trees allowed the use of simple sloping bases for slopes, this was not an option with the far older standard.

So to be honest there is at least to me, some methoed in my "madness". It is interesting that at shows we use more conventional "bottle brush" trees (I don't have to store them) but I sneak in the odd patch of 2D trees. interestingly they are never singled out. An artist friend, alas now passed away noted that the brain is very good at filling in missing details.

I did look at the modern "Flat" scene and they have some interesting cruciform trees but they spread to the ground unlike many European trees that have bare trunks below about 6ft due to animals grazing on the lower level items. .

So my decision is based on practicality and possibly artistic delusion. ;-).

Well, here would be maybe one of those examples of that gray area between game and art you mentioned – these tree groups below are from those cheap winter tree sets that hit the craft stores every Christmas season, so essentially they're inexpensive bottle brush trees.

Where the art comes in, was thinking 'outside the box' that these trees came in – they all had their own wire trunks each – I don't need no stinking trunks! ;)

That is, I don't need tree trunks when converting these into self-standing tree stands instead -

1) snip off each wire trunk flush with the tree's lowest branches
2) using super glue, join the trees together into groups so they support each other, and sit flush on the tabletop glued together as units

Now, instead of trying to set up dozens/hundreds of individual trees, I arrange pre-made [stable-standing] tree stands in a fraction of the time it would take otherwise.

This no-bases, "tree-stand" technique can work for all sorts of scales, even down to 3mm too.

The motivation to think up this way to arrange woods sections for games, came because I often don't have the time to spend to do this at conventions or at public game days……this necessity became my mother of invention.

The hoped-for result of the initial crafting time needed to make up this type of tree kit, was for fairly good looks to be achieved, and to take a whole lot less time anytime I set up my next game using these.

Even with the luxury of setting up a game to be played at home, why spend time, placing out one tree at a time….unless that's considered good time spent.

Yup they are great, we have the same for conventioms, cheap and cherful but we have trunks on ours so they are stuck on coins then painted. Not sure about groupings. Two trees together on a small piece of Tree base can look even worse than 2 single trees spread about a bit. Two tree bases instead of two trees yes but for me the sorage space would be an order of magnitude diffrence. Flat pack vs volume pack. Its all about art and personal compromises. Most of the folk I know are storage poor; the price of living in small houses.

Ush, thanks for your comments.

This type of 3D terrain kit does take up storage space.

I guess this is why the smaller scales have such usefulness [or should] in the hobby now…….that is, if someone is planning on doing terrain fidelity equal to the effort being put into figure preparation, or more so – units of them.

Ush, a question – why does the hobby industry in the UK seemingly favor the big miniatures so much…..is it just the business impetus of traditional figure sizes?

Another comment/question – are we losing battlefield-size games [and have instead gone to 'skirmish'], because big figs get most the visual/sales press? No denying 28s look great, but if space limits are an issue, doesn't that then limit them to being featured more and more in skirmish-size games, reflecting smaller patches of a battlefield?

"…why does the hobby industry in the UK seemingly favor the big miniatures so much…?"

Depends on your perspective, Fly. Other than GHQ, every 6mm and 2mm casting I own is a British import.

But I agree about terrain storage. My rule of thumb is that the volume of necessary 3D terrain for temperate zone battles is roughly the volume taken up by two armies--which is why I cut down to 28mm, 6mm and 2mm, and my battlefields are either high summer or desert. Snow would double my terrain volume.

On the more general question, I think one problem is ground scale. Looking at horse & musket, for instance, a 24-36 casting 28mm battalion in two ranks takes up about 12" and so makes your ground scale somewhere around 1"=10 yards. Given human arms you really can't have enough depth for a decent-size battle. Either you have tiny units of 3-4 castings, you declare each unit to be a brigade, or you confine yourself to actions the size of Chippewa or Guilford Courthouse, and use smaller castings for full-scale battles. Since the 28's do look beautiful, it's not surprising we're seeing a lot of skirmish sets--quick play, less expense, more portable and can be played even in small residences.

I do love the spectacle of the big battle with big figures, though, whatever strain it puts on the rules and the scenario designers.

Robert, great perspective as always.

Using your example and points above for the H&M period, 28s seem ill-suited and largely impracticable for putting on large field battles these days.

To your point, I haven't seen the spectacle of a big 25/28mm Napoleonics (or ACW) game played in my area for decades.

Btw, we're doing a 28mm AWI game based on the skirmishing at Hanging Rock, S. Carolina, but that'll max out at around a dozen maneuver elements involved (we'll call them 'battalions' each). To be honest, I'll call this "boutique" style gaming, and as much as might be seen fielded on a game table around here now (usually a couple dozen big figures is what's more common).

UshCha would probably like this setup……w/lots of individual trees!

Interestingly in my club there are lots of 25/20/25mm stuff including some of mine. There are competition players and they are almost exclusively 15mm (yeah right 18mm more like). Then there is me occasionally at 1/144.
The guys with the 25.20/25 are really painters fist and players second, their battlefields to me are overloaded when it come to Modern/WW2 ,but they are big on models and not so discerning of simulation. That crowd in the past have done 28mm but its rare to see them out wit9h that scale nowadays.

However there are no players currently into Napoleonic or ancients that are not competition players so perhaps less likely to be 28mm players. We did have some 40K guys but they left En-mass after an incident.

6mm did have a big following in our club once but they seem to have faded in popularity. I have never seen a 2mm game at the club and to be honest it has no appeal to me. You need too much terrain to produce a lifelike battlefield.
Assuming you stick with about 5 times between model and ground scale. 2mm is roughly 1/1000 so the ground scales would be 1/5000. So an 8 by 6 board would be 12km by 9km roughly. That's most of this map

link

Oversimplifying it leads to too many gross errors for it to be a game I personalty would want to play, but that is just me.

Personally 28mm are a turn off, the battlefield cannot be wider than 6ft (the maximum reach, my board is 6 by 6 and the middle is a pain) so for other than a very small skirmish the model to ground scale is too far out for me. But I am neither a painter or into painting a bit of colour is all I want or need.

Smaller scales still terrain have storage issues, our Hex terrain takes up a LOT of space even for 1/144. Hence Fold flat trees for 1/172 and 2D 2 piece for 1/144.

Personally the hedge issue is now less (not by any means no problem) due to the bendy hedge approach, much faster to lay lots of it, without for me, too much compromise.

Perhaps a how much hedge would be an interesting thread matching this one on trees.

"Perhaps a how much hedge would be an interesting thread matching this one on trees."

Uh-Oh-Ush! :)))

Fly, maybe it's the choice of area/players? My people still do 30mm tactical Napoleonics. There's a group in Indianapolis playing Napoleon's Battles in 25/28mm, and I'll head off tomorrow for the Seven Years War Association Convention in South Bend where 28mm is an intermediate scale. There will be 54mm games as well as 15mm. And there's never any shortage of 28mm big battles at Lancaster at the HMGS (Formerly East) conventions, though horse & musket is thinning out a little.

Robert, still sounds like there's grounds for grand armies!