Welcome to the jungle

This year's Chain of Command game at Gothcon will be (a small part of) the battle of Dien Bien Phu in Indochina. This is a prelude to the Vietnam war of which I know next to nothing about, but my mates Thomas and Koen are well versed in both relevant history and tactics used. As such my role is relegated to terrain making. With mostly Vietnam war movies in my mind I ordered a bunch of cheap but useful items from eBay.

I can imagine the customs' dissappointment when they realised the contents were all plastic.

I ordered a healthy mix of palm trees, low bushes and larger decidious trees. I also ordered a bag of bamboo and dug out the fake grass left from my defunct 6mm vietnam project (from back when I was blogging in Swedish).

I got 20 each of the palm trees, five of the large tree and ten of the small tree.

The "bushes" and bamboo. I think the bamboo are too short to be of use however. We'll see.

The fake grass, I have a complete mat left as well as several bases I did on old CD's earlier.

The grass tufts have a centre hole where the smaller trees, palms and bushes fit. Splendid. 

I used round MDF bases and old CD:s and built up the shape with polystyren. This CD has been used as a palette too.

The smaller items can be pushed into the polystyren. This is just for test fitting, I glued them later.

The larger trees and palms needed securing with a hot glue gun and spackle from the start though.

Vallejo textured gel was used for ground cover. I mixed these to get the reddish tint of the soil in Vietnam.

After an evening's worth of hot-glueing and mucking about with acrylic gel I had finished ten bases.

Two of the larger bases have a bare patch in the middle. You can either place figures there or one of the smaller bases.

I will have to decide what kind of flock I'm going to use on the ground, but I already think they look good!

As a first proof of concept I think it works. I won't paint any of the trees though, even though they look a bit plastic. It's too time consuming and I'm aiming for a mass effect anyway. Of course, not all of Vietnam is covered in jungle and the battle of Dien Bien Phu was mostly fought in a grass-clad valley. Still, copses and patches of vegetation existed here and there, as well as rice paddies and areas of tall grass. A rice paddy is in the works and I will do several of the CD-bases with only grass and bushes. I'm also thinking of doing some cratered bases as the ground was churned up by Viet-Mhin artillery.

Another thought is to do a few "alien terrain" bases if I get bored. Then I can use it all for Gates of Antares or Warhammer 40k.

Happy gaming!