ROADS, TRACKS AND TRAILS: These requires the same kind of planning as the rivers in terms of joining together, but do not demand - in a modular tile system - that we cut them out of the ground, If you aren't using tiles, follow the basic instructions for planning and cutting out streams and rivers, though (except for rare sunken roads) you won't need banks. The easiest roads are simply painted over the tile (hard to do well) or indicated by brown and tan flock mixes (for dusty dirt roads), ballast or similar for stone faced or tarred roads, all sprinkled over thinned white glue. These can look remarkably good if done right. You might even gouge out a few ruts in the surface. Since this kind of road does not rise above the ground surface, it is possible to have these on the reverse side of selected plain tiles. You'll need straights and curves, intersections and crossroads. For muddy roads with a lot of ruts and a generally nasty look to them, a putty mixture smeared with wheel tracks etc and painted to look wet and sticky looks wonderful, but probably won't work using the 'double-sided tile' approach. I made a set of 1 1/2" wide roads out of hardboard in 6" and 12" lengths for an American Civil War enthusiast, angling the edges as usual, and laying down the putty with an old plastic knife. Working in cart-tracks with a tooth pick, I let it dry. Then I painted it brown, sprinkled some sand over that, and let it dry again. It looked too pleasant, so I misted some dark, glossy brown spraypaint into the ruts, a touch of red ochre primer for that Rainy Day in Georgia look (red clay is vile when wet) and drybrushed a lighter brown over the highlights. Oh, I think I put some gloss varnish on it too. I finished by putting a little grass and weed on the outer edge of the roads. Just the effect we wanted! What do you mean, "double speed on roads"? WALLS & FENCES: I use a lot of commercial products here, since they are relatively cheap and good for their purpose. Nevertheless I recommend several homemade techniques that will not take forever. You can lay rough stone walling just as the real thing, though with Liquid Nails or similar for the cement. Draw out a line of the glue, place single stones in place, squirt glue over those and put on the next course. Another of Drew Doyle's ideas. I thought he was insane when he told me, but when I tried it I was amazed how quick it was. Spray the finished article black and dry brush it grey. American style snake fences can be made in 15mm scale with toothpicks or cocktail sticks, Lay them in the correct pattern, put some yellow glue to hold them, then return for the next layer when dry. Spray black, then mist with browns and greys. Toothpicks make good palisading or stockade in 10- 15 mm scale. It's easiest to lay them side by side and use sticky tape across the back to hold them in position while you 'plant' them. Once glued in place, remove tape and paint. Adobe type walls are easily made from wood strip of whatever height and thickness fits the bill. Smear on a little plaster, paint off-white or tan, sprinkle some sand on the paint before it dries, then dry-brush with a highlight shade. CAN'T SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES You can make your own trees from twisted picture-hanging wire. Cut three or four lengths 24" long, twist them together using a pair of pliers in each hand to make the trunk, then spread the untwisted ends to serve as branches. Glue on W. S. foliage clusters for leaves, or simply feather out the wire stands at the ends to make spooky winter trees. Having said this, most of us will be well advised to buy some commercial trees, of which there are many kinds. As a rule, though, the cheap ones are nasty and the good ones are violently expensive. Leaving aside this latter group entirely on the grounds that nobody wants to spend the price of a new Toyota on a collection of toy trees, lets see what we can do. I recommend the W.S. tree kits, especially the new bendable hard plastic versions rather than the older lead trees, You can get 44 pine trees in 15mm scale for the price of a cut price CD, a few less for larger trees, and for deciduous trees. Easy to assemble: just lay them out flat, mist a few shades of brown, grey and tan over the trunks to break up the factory-fresh plastic colour, then simply twist them into shape and glue on the foliage provided. I use a brush-on contact cement for this, which holds the foam very effectively - white glue doesn't. The horrible plastic Christmas trees we've all had improve radically when you spray adhesive on them and sprinkle with a dark green flock. The same thing goes for the 'bottlebrush' kind of fir tree. A strange craft product known in the U.S. as 'bump chenille' provides multitudes of small (10mm or under) fir or cypress trees simply by cutting it up with scissors. It looks like a pipe cleaner snake that at swallowed a succession of hamsters (1). Dunno what it's intended use is. Get the 'moss green' shade. I buy pairs of plastic palm trees in 15-20mm scale from a bakery supply house by the gross for about $10. You'll pay more at a cake shop, but they are still a bargain. Being cheap and soft plastic, there's only so much you can do to take off the 'toy' effect, but by dry brushing the trunks a bit and misting the tops with muted greens, black and tans, they look very reasonable en masse. A Pacific island with a few dozen of these will impress anyone. For 15mm and less, the Irregular Miniatures metal trees in their 6mm line are terrific, though expensive in bulk. Most model trees come in a disturbingly unnatural colour. Misting the tops with spray paints gives a more natural mix of shades, if you go lightly. Orchards can be made by selecting or making trees of the same general shape and size and carefully dabbing spots of white glue in random pattern over the foliage, Woodland Scenics and other companies make very small 'fruit' which sprinkles on. The red 'fruit' are apples on my smaller scale trees, cherries for 25mms. Always ready to pick as the troops march past, too - Base single trees on a metal washer for weight and stability, blending the tree base to the washer with plaster. Check your choices at the hardware store. Groups of trees look best on irregular shaped pieces of wood etc, with small bushes, fallen trees (ie twigs), rocks etc to make a mini-diorama. Remember, the floor of the forest is not grassy, it's dirt, rotting leaves, and green mossy patches. A good technique for showing the 'edge of woods' especially in the smaller scales, is to cut out a piece of boars and place a tight ring of trees and bushes around the outer edge. Leave the interior blank, simply placing some single trees inside. When in the course of the game troops move through, remove those trees, leaving only the perimeter treeline to define the woods. A more sophisticated version involves actually having an interior woods section that lifts out to place the troops within - there's more than one way to do this. Tropical forests are a bugger to replicate, since they feature lots of dense vegetation, often under a thick canopy of upper branches 100 + feet in the air. Since I like jungle campaigns gotta love those Congo cannibals! I use a lot of'dense forest' sections, impassible except to pygmies, which consist of a 2-3" irregular base with half a Styrofoam ball, flocked dark green and glued flat side down. Into the ball I insert 2-3 trees, usually a mix of cake shop palms and W.S. deciduous trees, then fill in the rest of the ball with clippings from various plastic aquarium plants and dried floral products. This gives the impression of a thick, colourful cluster of rampant tropical growth that even H.M. Stanley would prefer to walk around. Then fill in the space at the base of the ball with clumps of foliage to disguise the regularity of the shape. A couple of dozen of these spaced over the 'jungle' area, with ordinary deciduous trees in between, looks very good. Another method I have used is to make a 'jungle track' essentially the kind of road we've already discussed, but with space on either side for trees, bushes etc to be glued on. Make straight and curved sections, with some clearings for villages etc. This serves to show a distinct line between forest and pathway, also, I use it as a movement tray, placing the figures on one track section and swapping out sections as the troops move along the trail. Remember, you will never have enough jungle, so keep the playing space small enough to cover realistically - a three foot square of dense rainforest is plenty if visibility is 3" and fastest movement is 6", if you get my point. FIELDS & CROPS: Ploughed fields can be made from corrugated cardboard or corduroy fabric, mounted an a firm base. Once glued down, wash the filed in a thin mix of plaster, using excess plaster to merge the edges with the overlapping base. Once dried hard, paint brown, sprinkling sand onto the paint. Dry brush with a highlight shade. Remember, wet fields are darker and glossier than dry. You can show the beginnings of crops with some suitable greenery in the furroughs. An easy way of showing crops as they grow is to use a plain base, possibly with some plaster to show 'hummocks' ( because furroughs tend to flatten out over the growing season), then painted and sand-sprinkled. Use a brush to paint either lines or dots in a regular formation, then take a handful of your chosen scenic material - I use the W.S. coarse turfs for this - and simply stick a handful on. Once it dries, the glue will hold what you need and the rest poured off into it's container. Presto! Fields come in all sorts of sizes; I have made them from 2" squares to 2 foot squares with hedges and fences around. Go with what fits your need. STANDING GRAIN crops are always difficult to do convincingly. I've seen tan 'fun fur' used for wheat (chop it about a bit, mist it for changes in hue, stiffen it with spray varnish) and long pile carpet. Drew Doyle makes nice corn (maize) fields in 25mm using individual bits of some kind of fake Christmas tree. I think you should wander around the rugs and mats section of a discount store looking for what strikes you as having potential. VINEYARDS Are characteristic of much of southern Europe and other places, Make a base as for the crop field, then drill a series of holes to take stakes made from toothpicks. I cut the toothpicks and spray-paint them in vast quantities by sticking a bunch into a piece of scrap foam, then spraying black, brown and a mist of grey. The foam melts, but who cares? Once the stakes are glued in position, run strips of W. S. foliage - which is a stringy net covered with chopped foam - between them in rows. Remember to leave room for troop bases between the vine rows. HEDGES Can be made in the smaller scales using strips of green pot scourer (supermarket, cleaning supplies aisle, cheap), ideally dry brushed or flocked to cut down the uniformity of colour. For 15mms+, I tend to use the W.S. foliage clusters ripped up into 1/2" lumps, white glued in lines, with gateways from the toothpick stakes we've just mentioned. Remember that hedges in history are usually more like Normandy bocage than suburban privet, with massive irregular growth and whole trees. MARSH, SWAMPS & LONG GRASS Can be made either 1) at tremendous length by glueing short lengths of knotted sisal string into drilled holes or 2) much more quickly by buying a suitable cheap imitation grass mat (AKA astroturf), misting it with spraypaints to cut the uniformity and brightness of colour, and cutting it up into random shapes. Glue them to a base, merge in with plaster, and paint. Puddles and rivulets of glossy dark brown oozing through mud between grass clumps is the look we want. More Scenery for the Common Man Introduction, Materials, and Tools Project 1: New Set of Hills Project 2: Streams and Rivers Covering the Table Roads, Walls, Trees Buildings Back to MWAN #105 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2000 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com