"Good looking Vietnam terrain?" Topic

So model palm trees look bad very plastic.
But you also need other trees and plants too. Jungle isn't only palm trees.
Were can one get sutch terrain.

I'm not necessarily looking for the deepest darkest jungle.
My first idea is to do the marines fighting in and around the DMZ, from watching the Ken Burns documentary, it looks to be a lot of grasslands and some light jungle/forest. The grasslands can be made with teddy bear fur, but still need some good looking palm trees.

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Gunfreak,

If you are looking at I Corps right at the DMZ, most of the trees were decidious. Unless you got near the coast, you didn't see palm trees. Hills and mountains were the main features, with elephant grass and areas of bamboo.

If you were stateside, Battlefield Terrain Concepts makes some fine looking palms, but I do not know if Doug ships overseas.
He does carry Timecast, so you might email him.

Bismarck, what decidious trees do you recomend that looks the part?
Or bamboo for that matter.

The notion that Vietnam is one big jungle is more Hollywood than reality.

Most of it is covered in normal deciduous trees – just use your normal trees.

Triple canopy is hard to replicate. I bought a big batch off a fellow but it was scratch built using steel wool, paint and flock.

Rice paddies are easy to make, dry or wet.

For bamboo you can use broom bristles painted green.

You can buy bags of bamboo suitable for 20-28mm from china for a couple of dollars for 50.

Gunfreak,
Both Mark and Chris answered your question. For my games, I use the method recommended in FNG2. I use trees of three different heights for triple canopy.. Woodland Scenics can cover that for you. They have an inexpensive set of 14 various deciduous trees between 3 and 5" tall. Bamboo, just like Chris mentioned. For heavy woods, two size trees with the floor scattered with clump foliage. For true "jungle" one size trees, clump foliage, lichen and broken twigs. I am old school and use felt to delineate the boundaries. What was considered jungle was mostly first growth and tons of underbrush much like some thick brush and new forest here in the US.

Some plastic palm trees, well painted, can look good among the other trees.

The ultimate solution is to mix regular trees with palm trees, with stands of bamboo. But in addition you need to invest in a base of fur which can represent the elephant grass, which sometimes grew to 8-10' in height and use a base of foamboard under the fur. Then you need to invest in various foliage from the Michaels or Hobby Lobby store. Buy various types of decorations that you can pull apart and reconstruct into stands of jungle growth. You will need pins from the fabric stores to hold them down, pinned through the fur base into the formboard. You will also need to prepare stand alone bases of rocks or bamboo sections that can be placed around the table. If I could figure out a way to post pictures without a website I would …I will send some to my partner in the VN project and perhaps he can post them. I have submitted a VN game for Saturday morning at Historicon and will use the method described above to create the terrain.

Extra Crispy is correct that VN is not one big jungle but the terrain in the areas outside the triple canopy jungle can be just as challenging…thick grass with groves of heavy vegetation, headgerows surrounding villages, etc.

Back in 2013 I was in a similar situation, wanting some good looking palm trees to mix in with my pre-existing deciduous trees, for a game set in Mexico, which needed both types to look right. I bought Palms and Phoenix Palms from JTT Scenery Products. They were not cheap but I think they look awesome.

Here's a pic:

And in case you're interested, here's a LINK:

link

Well here is some pictures from a few of our past games.

link

Here are some photos I am posting for oldnorthstate from his collection of terrain: