Winter Trees

I was really lucky this winter season.  I acquired some trees from a former railroad hobbyist... THANKS DAD....and along with a few other supplies, I decided to go whole hog and create a set of trees for the Arctic setup I have.  I hadn't really fleshed out that set at all yet, so I was looking forward to getting something on the mat for an arctic setup, instead of just the cloud idea I have already.  These came together over a weekend, and I decided to make some, and use all of the winter trees I had been given.  All together 16 CD bases of arctic, tree filled goodness.
The tall trees are done with wooden skewers, that I sized up to 5-6" each, and the branches are odd cut shapes of scrub mats that I got from a former employee at work.  Poke a hole in the cut out shapes... hot glue down the painted skewer, and then top with snow.  For snow I happened to have a very dated diorama kit and just used the snow packet for it, but you could use anything.  A quick matte seal coat over the top and boom... trees for almost nothing.  If you had to buy everything yourself still under $20, less if you don't get the fake conifer trees.  For me... nothing says better than cheap.

Head in the Clouds

I re-watched the original Star Wars trilogy a few weeks back.  For the most part, it was background noise while I was building... the usual.  Then Empire came on, and the Cloud city on the Planet Bespin came up when Lando sabotaged Han and Leia.  I happened to look up when the ship was landing and saw the huge cloud-scape layout, and wondered if I could do something like that and realized I was already setup to do it.

I cobbled this first phase of this set together in a single night of playing around and building, and quickly realized not only could I do this... I had all the parts to do it for no additional cost!!  My dream build.  This couldn't have come together more easily, and when played out on the Icy Mat I have, the clouds absolutely POP.  I will do a follow up with how they look with the platforms and catwalk setup I have, but I just had to post these while they are still drying.  I laid them out and  couldn't be happier with them.  Easy big lumps of puffy clouds that make for PERFECT line of sight blockers, and impassable terrain.  They will compliment the Arctic set when that gets rolling as big snowy hills as well.

Made from Blue Foam, cut into random shapes, some in a few levels, and then a layer of glue followed by Poly-Fill Fiber.  I happened to have purchased a bag of this over a year ago thinking it was something else, and it landed in the closet of possible build materials.  I thought when building them that the blue foam would show through on spots, and in fact it does... but when it is on the mat, it is a perfect blend for the blues on the mat itself, so I think it works well.  Follow the jump for a few more shots.

Battlemats - Change up your battlefield!

Tired of an inter-galactic scale war that is fought on the same planet with the same look battle after battle?  Me Too!!!

I kinda teased about the post topic earlier, but I thought I would showcase the mats I have made thus far.  Mostly I got sick of playing game after game on that boring field of generic green turf, and I disliked the seam in the middle of my table.  As the table is modular and divides in half, mats were a simple solution to seamlessly change that up.

I can't believe how easy these were to make, and I highly recommend them.  For ~$22 per mat, you can make some really interesting boards that will go with you very easily.  When you are done, I simply roll them up around a cardboard tube, or PVC pipe.