Built some new Forests.

 So a few years ago I built some forest bases for my games.  If you scroll through some of my past posts you will see what I had made.  Those were all first time attempts and I wasn't happy with them but I stuck with them until I figured out what and how I would redo them.  Well after searching the internet and finding lots of different opinions on how to build them and I found some great ideas. I had two requirements for this project.  The first was that the trees had to come off of the base for storage.  The second the bases had to be large enough for firing distances and for the troops in them to have some sort of visual spotting range once inside of them.  After looking through the rule sets that my group uses the most, I decided that base of the forest had to be at least 6" in depth.

The first thing I had to acquire was new trees.  With this I decided to build my own using Woodland Scenics trees and foliage. The Woodland Scenic trees have removable trunks so I went with them.  So after much trial and error, I came across a system that worked for me at least.  I purchased some glue called 9001 clear.  This stuff dried in a couple of hours.  Once that dried I then took some aquanet and sprayed the foliage to harden it up.  Once that was dry I worked on the bases.

For the bases, I borrowed an idea from another blog (who's name escapes me at the moment) and went to Home Depot and bought some self-adhesive flexible tiles.  They were about $1.50 a tile.  I bought 6 of them.  I also bought a roll of draw liner to stick to the back of the tile and to prevent them from slipping.  I then took some good scissors and cut out patterns of what the forests would look like.  I then glued down the tree bases to the forest base.

These photos show the trees on the forest base before I glued down the tree bases.

Once the tree bases had dried I applied some Liquitex Matte Gel and mixed it with Burnt Umber Acrylic Paint.  Using a painting knife I smeared the gel onto the forest base.  Ensuring I covered the tree bases.  Using some Woodland Scenics Fine Turf and Static Grass Flock in Harvest Gold and Light Green, I sprinkled it all over the bases.  I let that sit for 24 hours to dry.  I then sprayed the top of the bases with Woodland Scenics Scenic Cement.  That sat for another 24 hours to dry.  The finished base looked like this:

I then put the trees back into their bases for the finished product.  I added some 15mm pikemen to give a sense of scale for the pictures.

I'm rather happy with how they turned out.  I will be using them this weekend for the first time.  Hopefully they will stand up to the rigors of gaming.