Into the Woods..... Build and Review

I recently received a number of items from 4ground.  Amongst them were three of their large woods for use in my Saga games. I decided to get the trees glued and painted first. You can make use of three woods in 4 to 6 point Saga games.

I bought three different woods to give some variation. Here's some scale added with the aid of a Gripping Beast 28mm Viking model.

First,  the large oak wood...

Then the large pine wood....

Finally, the large orchard....

Each large wood comes with a two part base  made from 2mm laser cut MDF - see the picture below.

The bases are sturdy. The trees themselves are made of some kind of wire armature covered in a kind of flock that seems prone to shedding. I hope they don't continue to do this (hopefully its just excess from being fresh out of the bag). The base of the tree is a brown plastic trunk. Some of the trees had obvious signs of being hot glued into the plastic trunks. A little clean up may be necessary.

You just pop out the disks and glue the trees on to them, then glue the rest of that piece to the base and you have a nice steady base for your wood. I used PVA to glue the base parts and left to dry, with a weight on top to keep the pieces from lifting (I noticed this happening after a few minutes on one edge so in came a heavy paint pot!)

trying the trees for size....

Then its a matter of painting the base.... I chose a darker green but I guess a brown would do just as well.

Remember to paint inside the holes where the trees go or it will look odd "in game". Don't allow the paint to well up in the holes though or you may have trouble fitting the disks back in.

Next was attaching the trees to the bases. I used my trusty hot glue gun to put a blob of glue in the centre of each disk and pushed the base of the tree trunk into place.

The next stage was to paint the tree base the same colour as the rest of the wood and then put some static grass on using a coat of PVA glue.

The static grass I use is either Javis or GW, I can't see to see much difference in the 'summer' blend I use, other than the price.

Finally, each wood had static grass glued onto it, being careful to avoid getting any glue into the hole where the trees sit.

And there you have it, three sets of woods completely done taking about an hour (excluding drying time).

They look pretty good and can sit together closely as well. If you want them to sit snuggly, 4ground do a series of small woods consisting of two trees that is designed to sit snugly next to the large wood base. One small problem I am not sure sure of is the problem of the tree bases warping very slightly after being glued and flocked. Some of them no longer site 100% snugly back in their recesses. Its not too bad, but one or two of the bases no longer sit flush. Any ideas for avoiding this or fixing it would be appreciated.

For the price of UK £8 each (base and three trees) I think they represent very good value and should last a long time. With a small niggle over the overall quality of the trees and the problem of a little bit of warping on some of the bases I shall give them 8 wood axes out of 10.

About the Author: "ambler" / Mike lives in the North West of the UK. After years of RPG's and GW wargaming he now plays in a long running Amber Diceless RPG and plays Flames of War at the NWGC in Stockport. Saga is a recent addition to the games-under-the-belt collection. Check out his blog: www.not2oldtowargame.wordpress.com