Typically, I represent woods on the tabletop by using painted felt along with a few trees positioned on the felt. This method usually works well, and for bigger wooded sections, additional pieces of felt are used. However, in a recent American Civil War (ACW) game I have played over the Christmas holidays there was a need for some quite large areas of woodland. Having insufficient green felt to represent these larger areas prompted me to look for alternative options.
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| My typical approach to representing wooded areas on the tabletop. |
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| Painted felt is used to show the extent of the wood. |
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| For larger woods additional felt is added. |
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| A larger wood on the tabletop. |
Once upon a time, when my tabletop was simply painted green, my method for showing wooded areas used caulk to draw the edges of the wood with a few trees placed inside area. All very old school. Drawing with chalk on my gaming mat would not work out well and be quite messy to clean up. However, thinking about this caulk approach lead me to the idea of using green wool tied in a loop to represent the edge of a wooded area.
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| Green wood tied into a loop represents the edge of the wood. |
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| Trees are moved to accommodate units. |
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| A unit emerges from the woods. |
Once I have knotted the ends of the wool to create the various sized loops, I added a drop of glue to all the knots as wool has a tendency to undo, even when tied with a Reef Knot.
A handy tip, Peter!
ReplyDeleteThe wool clings well to the gaming mat and does not move.
DeleteI've started using cork coasters with a few rocks to represent wooded areas
ReplyDeleteRound ones for single trees
Square for Woods
For sci fi I use aquarium trees mounted on coasters but painted in reds and purples for an alien feel
Cheap and cheerful but they work
Pete
Thanks, always like cheap and fun ideas.
DeleteVery clever idea Peter. Simple and effective.
ReplyDeleteI assume the wool is taken from your wife's collection. Any chance she could knit you some appropriate sized wood sections? With some brown tracks through them if required. 😁
Liberated from my wife’s wool collection. No other requests were made :-)
DeleteI like the wool idea. Like you I'm experimenting with larger wooded areas - for myself it is for an WW2 Operational game. My existing card board area templates are struggling for this purpose. Perhaps wool will do the trick.
ReplyDeleteThe other option I looked at was yarn used for cross-stitching. It comes is colours and is thinner than wool and would cling nicely to a gaming mat made of cloth.
DeleteOnce again, a simple but effective way of representing a wood edge, that can be laid out in any shape required, and could also be used to mark the edge of an impassable marsh etc...nice one Peter!
ReplyDeleteYes, there are other applications as you mention. I may use for minefields in my WW2 games.
DeleteDepending on how "realistic " v's practical you want things, you could use different colored edging to define different things eg red for a minefield perhaps??
DeleteThere are a few options there, eg brown for a depression. A few options to consider and raid my wife’s stash of wool.
DeleteAn interesting way to do it! Do you also lightly glue it to the table?
ReplyDeleteI find the wool clings to my cloth tabletop mat sufficiently. If the wool does not sit well, I just soak the wool and it sits well on the tabletop.
DeleteThat's a nice idea Peter. Clear and not too intrusive.
ReplyDeleteI have taken to simply arranging trees into a wood and letting the edge be defined by the outer trees. It doesn't seem to create any confusion amongst the players (solo or with others).
Regards, James
Thanks, I sometimes lack the required number of trees to neatly define the edges, but making or buying a few more would solve that problem.
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