A Cabin in the Woods

In yet another terrain experiment, I was able to turn some very nasty looking toy Christmas trees into something a bit more realistic!  I don't have the before pictures just yet, but I am planning on doing a how to post for the next batch.

We needed something that looked less like normal deciduous trees to make the log cabin and lumber mill pieces make more sense!  

They still work just fine with the rest of the tree stands, and will provide just as much line of sight blocking and cover.

In addition to the conifer trees, I experimented with a "Swamp stand", where I had a set of trees but also a decent size pool.  That pool had some dead stumps sticking out of it, with the idea that I could extend the swamp aspect of the board for our Prypiat Marshes campaign.

It was not very difficult to make those pine trees look less like neon green plastic with white splattered frosting.  I simply painted trees with the airbrush, wiping out all the unnatural tones, followed by a few layers of flock.

I will be very curious to see what happens when we play some games on this.  Up until now, most of the board has been urban in nature, with a few small tree stands... and roads!

On our Barbarossa board, the only roadways are waterways.  You can also see a few more of the pine tree stands by the lumber mill.

It is quite ironic that those nifty sawed off tree logs were originally the stands that held the fake pine trees!  I had to yank the tree wires out of those, which was a challenge to avoid smushing the branches.

I was just about to toss those away, when the idea struck me to use them as terrain.  Sure enough, they looked fantastic!  They are also big enough for individuals to hide behind them.

Infantry should really dominate these games, with tanks and artillery very limited in their fields of fire.  This will also take some getting used to, as observers, snipers and vehicles can hold down entire areas of the board by themselves.

These small rickety bridges might also end up as key positions, which was the whole point of the multiple forks in the river.  While a different game system was originally intended for this board, it turns out that it is fantastic for our upcoming Bolt Action games.

Here is a view of that swamp tree stand.  I will also try to do an article on this piece.  It is not very difficult if you save up plenty of nifty branches!

Roy's Soviets seem right at home in this environment.  Can the marauding Wehrmacht make them feel a little less cozy?  The wait is nearly over, so stay tuned...