"The English Oak at 1/72 scale - how?" Topic

I was looking into getting some trees that were on the area of WWII Eastern Front and getting accurately scaled models for use in my wargaming.

First, I looked into which trees are most common in the area. As a completely ignorant person on the subject of trees, I went and looked at a few places and came up with the English Oak being very common in some of the areas I like to wargame, near the Don River area.

I looked up the size of the English Oak, and found a common height of between 20m and 40m. At first I thought, no big deal. However, I then did the calculation of 1/72 and realized I would need trees that were 27cm to 55cm in height to be in scale! That's enormous! Especially considering the ground scale rarely matches the miniature scale at 1/72, I'm not sure how I should proceed.

So, for those that game in 1/72 (or perhaps its evil twin, 1/76 or generic "20mm"), what size trees should I really aim for? I'm thinking an exact scale match would simply be too large to be practical, but then again 6" tall trees would be anywhere from 1/2 to 1/4 the actual height they should be.

Help? O_o

but then again 6" tall trees would be anywhere from 1/2 to 1/4 the actual height they should be.

I presume you are going to have hills. And are those hills going to be in "correct" vertical scale? Because they will need to be a couple of metres tall, minimum. You simply cannot match vertical scale.

Everything we do is a representation, from "units" represented by a few figures, through discrete time "moves" instead of the real flow of time, and three houses representing a village.

Use the smallest trees that don't look ridiculous. For 15mm I have ones that are only 3" tall. No-one cares.

Woodland Scenic has a tree/scale chart to help. I use the 2-3 inch with my 15s. Scale says these are @ 20-40 feet tall

I wrote a tutorial how to make oaks for 15 and 28mm. I think thye will also match 1/72. It is true that you won't be able to depict an oak true to scale, but if it looks right, I don't see a big problem with this.

link

Peithetairos, that is a great tutorial! I'm not sure if I'm up for such a challenge (as it looks quite intimidating) but I'm glad you shared it, for sure!

I guess I will have to "accept" having trees that are smaller than "in scale" trees would be. Makes sense.

We find that even with 54mm figures trees 6 inches tall are plenty big enough – though it does help if you avoid putting them right next to buildings.