Painting Terrain Tree Stands

By Kreighton Long

I recently stumbled across Father and Son Gaming’s Organic Shapes MDF Terrain Base Set and thought about the improvement they could offer my current terrain set-ups.  For years I’ve collected trees, a couple at a time, from various conventions.

I’ve used those same trees on nearly every table I’ve thrown together.  From time to time I’ve had a minor hiccup where my opponent or I would need to reposition a tree or two to accommodate units moving through  the clusters of trees and in doing so would lose track of the intended outline of the trees.  For the most part these are friendly club games and we’ve been able to work through it for the spirit of the game.

As I have growing aspirations to do well at competitive events I have a need to train accordingly and having clearly defined patches of dense terrain seemed like an obvious must.  But what to do about it?  This is where the organic shapes MDF base set comes into play.

By painting the bases to represent a bed of fallen leaves while simultaneously near-matching the color scheme of my existing tree collection I can combine the organic shapes MDF bases with my existing tree collection to create clearly marked patches of dense terrain that look good paired with my existing trees.

I played around with some Apple Barrel paints and found a color combination that was “good enough” for what I needed.  I applied layers of paint using torn up pieces of sponge from blister packs.  All paints used below are from Apple Barrel.

I started by painting a layer of 1:1 mix Arbor Green and Black.

 

Next I sponged on a layer Marsh Green.

 

Then Khaki.

 

Followed by Territorial Beige.
Golden Sunset.
And finally Burnt Umber.

 

My finished first version — ready for the table.

Happy painting!