Forest Bases

In an earlier article about Trees I mentioned using bases to represent the over all forest. This article is just about the bases we’ve made specifically to use as forests for our games.  The overall process to making these is pretty easy, but there are a few quirks here and there.

Tree - Forest Bases
Fresh Cut Foam Core

The easiest part is to get a piece of foam core and draw a random roundish shape onto it, like I did in the picture above.  The shape is not really important and is totally at your discretion.  Foam core doesn’t cut the best so the edges did take a little bit of sanding to even them out.  We also are using black foam core because these bases will be used on our static grass board and we were following a very similar process in terms of flocking.

Thick Layer of White Glue
Thick Layer of White Glue

After all of that it’s a pretty straight forward set of steps, apply a thick layer of white glue.

Thick layer of Static Grass
Thick layer of Static Grass

Completely cover the entire thing with flock.

Tree - Forest Bases-4
After knocking off the majority of the static grass

Flip up the piece and knock off all of the loose flock.

With little bits of other flocks
With little bits of other flocks

We then added a sprinkling of grey flock to the still wet piece and that about finishes the deal.  One of the biggest problems that I have with foam core is the warping that takes place when you do stuff like this.  To combat it, put a full layer of glue down on the other-side once the top has dried.  This will take the worst of the warp out of the piece, or at least it has in our testing.