I’ve been looking at trees. What trees to use for Operational level wargaming in my draft Deep Battle rule set. Since my Experiment on a 4 Inch Hex Grid I’ve gone for increasingly smaller terrain including Tiny Hills and Monopoly Buildings. And now I find my normal size 15mm trees are too big for the look I’m striving for, so I’ve gone for copses of small trees – trees that would normally be used for 5mm (1/300th) or 6mm (1/285th) scale wargames.
Individual 15mm trees
So here is my starting point. Individual trees for 15mm scale in a 4 inch hex. Ditto for the swamp features. For me it just doesn’t give a sense of operational scale. It looks like a skirmish.
Individual 5mm or 6mm trees
So I plonked some of my 6mm trees on the table. I say “6mm” but they are just as likely to be 5mm or 1/285th or 1/300th scale. These trees are individually based on 1p coins but I put three together in a single hex. Ditto for the swamps. I reckon this looks better. But not good enough.
Copses of 5mm or 6mm trees
So I have put together some 5mm or 6mm copses – a group trees on small bases.
I put two or three of these copses in each wooded hex. Some copses are round to give a sense of density. Some are long and thin to naturally run alongside linear features like roads and railway lines.
Now that is what I’m talking about. Suggest a forest without being a forest.
I’ll post on how I made them shortly.
Nice. At this scale, I think it works best to “suggest”. I wonder whether 15mm minis would work at all, though.
Not sure whether I like individually based 6mm trees (in threes) or the copses. Either gives the “suggestion” vibe you’re looking for, in any case.
This link isn’t loading for me: https://balagan.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Tree-247-All-copses-from-one-pack-of-pipeliners-67-of-them.jpeg
Andres, Link now fixed. Thanks for mentioning it.
Very nice! If you’re interested in “zooming out” even more the scale of woods you might check something that seems to be very trendy in the 2mm community right now… Basically you can make lots of convincing & cheap woods out of fluffy bath mats. There should be a tutorial on the toofatlardies’ youtube channel IIRC.
Very nice!
Another cheap but effective idea can be to use cropped green sponges (those for cleaning pots), painted with dry brush…
I am interested to know why you are choosing 60km hexes to game on. I am currently toying with 100km hexes.
Actually, I’ve ended up using 20km hexes for Front Operations and 40km hexes for Strategic Operations. The Korsun-Shevchenkovsky Operation (25 Jan – 17 Feb 1944) so I used 20km hexes.