Finally got around a painting up that last tube of Toob trees, which are hard plastic toys perfectly sized for 15 mm wargaming.
Since I was already basing and painting, this provided a good opportunity to fix some old bases that were just way too small. Obviously with a base as small as the molded plastic, you need to use heavy washers or 1-inch MDF, but long ago I opted for washers too light and too small. This led to the trees falling over like drunks on their way home from the bar. This is no longer the case, and the new trees blend in extremely well with the old ones.
Here’s a real world shot showing how good the mix looks on God’s canvas. It occurs to me that a little yellow highlighting on another few trees would help smooth out the contrast between pure green and pure yellow/red, and those highlights wouldn’t look out of place on a midsummer table either. That’s the kind of flexibility we’re looking for in this hobby.
Okay, so the autumn colors might not, but therefore a special project. As a child of the upper Midwest, I grew up in those long and endless Autumn days where the trees are majestic signs of God’s artistic genius. It’s high time my war game table reflected God’s glory. To that end, I’ve painted up five trees in autumn colors. Again, obviously, not the conifers, and not too many of them. These are essentially special terrain features, and I don’t want every table to be a fall time table. Like the season itself if it really was endless you might get sick of it.
And the nice thing is, not all trees turn color at the same time, which means you don’t need a whole table full of reds and oranges and yellows because you can sprinkle in some greens and still get the same effect.
A few other autumn-coded terrain features will find their way on to the table, but rather than over promising under deliver, you’ll just have to wait until I get around to putting them together, getting them painted, and getting them posted.
In the meantime I’ve also included a shot of what my storage solution looks like. If you haven’t seen it, it’s nested Really Useful Boxes. The fall color trees will live with the split rail fences because rural New England and Mid-Atlantic farms make the perfect setting for the turn of the seasons.