Battletech: Trees for Battlescape

Howdie.  I have been working on small tree stands to work with Battlescape terrain for my Battletech games.  I started off with a mix of different (and inexpensive) small scale trees, using a hot glue gun to affix them to pennies and (for the larger trees) steel washers.  In some cases, I clumped 2 or 3 pennies together for a larger stand of multiple trees.  Included in this are some rightly colored ornamental trees... I thought putting a few out would make the woods more "alien", or at least more "festive"....

Afterwards, I affixed a mix of sand and white glue, something to give the stands more texture.  Also, this surface is more accepting of paint.  This also helps harden the stand.  Notice I have been using sheets of paper or plastic grocery bags as this process leaves a lot of little bits of residue.

After this was dry I painted the bases with a wash of dark brown paint thinned with water.  Once this dried, I applied a few different flock... starting with some earth blend turf, then different colors of foliage, making each stand more of a tiny vignette, hoping this helps sell the "woods" look.

The Battlescape terrain is a bit of work to set up, so i went with some sample shots just to demonstrate the finished look.  Appears some Inner Sphere types are tangling with Jade Falcons....  One last part I have not quite decided on is marking the woods hexes so that trees can be removed for the insertion of moving Mechs (like the Banshee in these images), and removed to be able to draw lines of sight (for just about every thing in these images).  I do have some battescape terrain sheets that you cut out, which are already marked, making this task very easy.  But I don't have a lot of that.  I think I will be using small pieces of felt which I can place in the middle of each hex, so that when a tree is removed, it will be easy to see which hex(es) it foes back on.

Of course, these trees, while on the smaller side, will still work with all larger scales of miniatures, either as full sized trees in 15mm, or understory thickets in 28mm.

Not sure when I will get to test these guys out in a game, but I will be sure to post about it when I do.

Thanks for reading, and remember, only you... and your Stalker... can prevent forest fires!

Chalfant