One of the things you need for skirmish miniature games like Last Days or D&D is a collection of scatter terrain. Stuff like treasure chests, barrels, bushes, trees, weapon racks, etc.

For Last Days I’ve been slowly collecting stuff for a wilderness type setting, where there is an old wreck of a farm house surrounded by trees and fences, the odd abandoned car. The trees were an issue.

I’m not up to building my own. Commercial ones were way too expensive. You could be paying over twenty quid, nearly thirty for three trees!

So I’ve been putting getting trees off. I’d need a few and at those war gamer prices way out of my league.

Since then I’ve started DMing. It meant I needed to come up with a solution.

On thingyverse I found a great looking stl file. But I never got round to getting any printed off. My more urgent needs were tiles for caves and boats.

What I liked about the 3d printed option was they would be cheaper to get done. They make great table theatre. I’m a big fan of table theatre. It gives a wow factor. You have to admit when you see the photos of tables full of dwarven forge (or other 3D printed tiles) they look damn impressive. Although some may argue a tad over kill.

Finances force me to take the approach of just enough to get the idea over. So I use a mix of 3d tiles, cardboard tiles, battle maps, with scatter terrain strategically placed on them.

But I found an affordable solution, that didn’t require me to have access to a 3d printer. I found some tree stumps!

One of the things the 3d trees and the expensive war gaming solutions had was canopy. Although very visually impressive. They have the same problem that the dwarven forge dungeons have in the majority of photos out there. In those photos the dungeon walls block the visibility for the players of what’s going on. And that is also an issue with the trees that have a canopy.

The nice thing about the tree stumps is that they show where the tree is without getting in the way. On some of the stumps the players miniature can be placed on top of the stump to indicate that the player has climbed up the tree.

Don’t get me wrong I’d be all over using the 3d printed trees. They look awesome.

But as an affordable compromise that will still give that table theatre, and not obstruct visibility these are a fantastic option.

Next a collection of columns to use.

Here are a couple of useful links for those interested:

Urban Construct Tree Stumps, YouTube videos with links on trees