Needed materials

• Fencing wire (17 gauge preferred)
• Masking tape
• Primer (Red oxide preferred)
• Corse steel wool
• Spray mount (Super 77 preferred)
• Fine flock (mixed colors if possible)
• 1/16" compressed fiber board

Optional

• 1 1/2"High density insulation foam
• Wood glue
• Sand, ballast and/or kitty litter
• various acrylic paints (mid grey, deep red brown, deep wood green and a light grey, or white)
• Static grass

Time to grow a tree

Most every fun battlefield is full of terrain, and often trees are a staple of this. It adds a great 3 dimensional effect to your gaming table and adds a lot of life to it. Trees are actually pretty cheap and easy to make, way cheaper than any store bought variety and usually way better looking. And if your able to wrangle in a friend or two, you could easily create a full blown forest in no time and share the wealth. With a little help, I've created enough to completely field a tournament.

We get started by creating the very core structure of the tree trunk itself with a very inexpensive, strong material, fencing wire. I bought a small spool of 17 gauge fencing wire and only because I knew I was going to create enough tree templates for an entire tourney. Well, after making over 30 templates, and giving away enough to make another 30 templates easily, I still feel like I haven't even scratched the surface of my stock. About 10 feet of this wire will create 3 to 5 trees, depending on their size.

For a medium to large sized tree, take about 6 pieces of wire at about 8 inches long. Place all of the similar length wires in a bundle and with a pair of vise grips, hold them down about an inch from the bottom of the bundle. Then with another pair of pliers or vice grips, start twisting the bundle about a third of the way up until it becomes tightly twisted and a self supporting structure.

With the base of your tree having been created, start to take every two pieces of wire, and "branch them out" via continuing the twisting half way up and pulling it out from the center of your bundle. Then continue to bend and kink the wire out to bring a little life and natural look to the branches. Continue this on the remaining wires until you have created the look you are going after.

Now take the wire on the bottom and start to bend them out like a root structure that you can see from surface level. This will give you a mechanical structure to attach it to our template, as well as create a realistic effect of roots, once we cover the surface of our template with static grass or flock. Once you have done this, do yourself a favor and test the flatness and balance of your tree by placing it on a flat surface, subtle tweaks and adjustments are best done at this point than later on in the build.

Get some bark on you fool

Wire our wire frame built, we can now start to flesh out our tree. Take some thin masking tape (thinner the better, as it will more easily wrap around the frame work) and start wrapping it around the tree itself. I personally wrap the main trunk with a single full width strip, and then take smaller strips torn in half length wise to fill in the upper branches, thicken up areas closer to the trunk and and where else you feel is needed.

After your tape wrap is completed, I personally like to hit it with a spray spackling compound. It adds a slight texture to the structure, fills in the gaps left by the tape and smoothes out the surface with a very quickly executed step. I tend to grab one tip of an upper branch and hit the trunk thoroughly. After this step, its good to let your tree sit and dry over night. Now this isn't an absolutely necessary step and can be easily left out, or even substituted with a textured paint or any other personal techniques.

After letting the texture dry, I prime the entire tree with a red oxide primer. This will quickly create a good surface to paint on, as well as the base color for our tree trunk. After letting the primer dry, take a dark brown acrylic paint, and paint a thick wash onto the primed surface. Personally I use an artist acrylic for this and save my pricey miniature paints for what they were intended for.

Bring out the sun, we need some greenery

Time to get a little life in our tree. Start off my getting the most corse steel wool you can find. Thinner can work also, but I find the more corse has a better look and will hold up better to wear and tear. Take a biscuit of steel wool and start stretching it out and thinning out its appearance. Start pulling it over your trees branch frame work like a shower cap almost. Make sure to have it connect or touch the frame work in several different places on each branch if possible, as this will strengthen the overall structure once done.

Take your flock and ready it in a bowl that is at least twice the diameter of your tree, as this will help you contain your flock when applying it. Now break out your spray mount. I personally use Super 77 by 3M. It's something I use often already and this stuff can stick a small car to a wall if you wanted.

Spray the steel wool thoroughly with it. Try spray it from the bottom up for the most part, as this will help you avoid the truck as much as possible. The spray mount will do 2 things, allow you to easily apply the flock and also fortify the structure, as it becomes almost web like where all of the threads of the steel wool cross, quickly become glued together. Then pour your flock over the tree, making sure to hit all off the steel wool and letting the excess fall back into the bowl. Make sure to shake all the extra out, as a lot may tend to hang in the "web" of steel wool that you have now created. Once this has dried, one optional step to keep all of your flock in place, is to simply hit it with a heavy duty hair spray. At this point, you will notice a few strains of the steel wool poking out a bit further than the rest and making your tree a little less than fitting, but this can be cured quickly by breaking out an old pair of scissors and trimming them off, almost like clipping the hedges.

Planting a tree

Now for the "template" part of this tree template project. Take any template you find usable, a roto zipped piece of board, a used or old CD or anything else that is suitable, and place a blob of epoxy directly to the template. You can even mix it directly on the template to make things easier. Take the tree and wiggle it into the blob till it covers the root structure of your tree. This will create a more than sufficient hold and vary the earth to give you a rooted look.

Once this cures, fill out the rest of the template with the texture of light gravel, small rocks and static grass or flock to your pleasing. I personally went with similar methods found in my article on Rough terrain templates. Though I will use much smaller rocks that will allow miniature to maneuver easily on the template.

Gaming with

I have used this sort of tree terrain template many of times. With half movement while on the template and concealment (+2 DEF) if a targeted model has its base on the template. Just make sure you figure this out before a game with your opponent, and most of all, happy gaming.