Terrain: Trees

I have previously talked about my terrain use, and the Covid lockdown has given me time to work on crafting.   One of the things I had been banging my head against is trees.

Trees are fun scatter terrain to use in a wilderness encounter, but unlike rocks, buildings, etc. they are tricky to do/work with.

Nice trees are a lot of work and fiddly/fragile and possibly shed. Easy trees don't always look that great or are kind of "blobby".   DwarvenForge's recent tree offerings are great, but pricey to get a good bit of woods.

I tried a few things based on the work of some very talented crafters but none quite clicked with me.  Random twigs from the yard were OK for autumn/winter trees, but also fragile.

So, going back to basics, I asked why I wanted the trees.  While dioramas/displays are nice, I want them for miniature play.  That being the case, their primary role is to denote the location of significantly large trees, those that would be useful for cover or climbing.  

So it occurred to me.  The leaves and branches are the problem with all their fiddly bits.  For mini combat I really just need the trunks.  A number of nice trunks and spots for minis to sit up in the "branches" would be a lot easier to craft and end up with something that can resist the rigors of play and transport.

So this is what I ended up with:

These are made of blocks and shafts of xps foam cut down by hand.  The edges are cut and scraped to give a bark appearance and the whole trunk of the tree is squished, twisted, and bent to give it an naturalistic contour.  The whole thing is glues to some dense cardboard for weight and finished with grit and sawdust.  The rest is craft paint.

I want to enhance this with a few bits of clump terrain of bushes and tight packed small trees. But that will have to come later.

Fancy/leafy trees for show clearly need to be a separate item from "toss if a bin" scatter terrain.