Cheap Plastic Trees

While planning my European Theater WWII games, it occurred to me that I was in need of some deciduous trees. I have a dozen evergreen trees, but that's it. I don't count the snow and glitter covered Christmas-village type trees of which I have a few dozen - I am loathe to use them except for Christmas-themed games because at the very least they leave a glittery mess on your fingers every time you touch them, at worst, they leave glitter all over the ground cloth, the figures, your hands, the carpet, etc. Also many of them are gold, silver, or a shade of red - hardly typical of European forests, although I've never been to Europe, so maybe I'm wrong about that.

I also have no desire to make trees. Or rather I do, but most homemade trees involve clump foliage, flock, and such, and seem delicate. I am rough on my toys, particularly terrain - cramming it unceremoniously into a large plastic storage bin when the games are over.

What I need are durable, but also inexpensive, trees. And I found some, so I thought I'd take a chance.

Made by Arcady, the bag header is labeled "Animal World" and "Wild Animals", with pictures of an elephant, giraffe, and a lion. Never mind that it's just a bag of trees. 

The way they are packed gives the distinct impression of aquarium plants - at least that was my impression. They certainly did not give me much hope at first, despite having seen pictures of them on Amazon (which is where i got them).

Here is what they look like out of the package. They are somewhat squished and the foliage is mostly on one or the other side of each tree.

However, this isn't my first rodeo. One pot of boiling water and between a few seconds to a few minutes of dunking, and they look quite a bit better:

As a group I think they make a fairly convincing woods (if a bit toy-like. which, no surprise, is a selling point in my book). 

You may have noticed that the trunks, besides being semi-flat or semi round depending on your perspective, are green - this bothered several reviewers who wanted brown. But brown is not realistic so why get upset about green? 

I had planned to dry brush some grey over the trunks and limbs - which based on my two seconds of observation this morning while walking the dog, is a more accurate color for bark, but that seems like a lot of work and I don't care that much. Green is fine by me - just pretend the tree is covered in moss. I will however paint the base with Burnt Umber, or maybe its Raw Umber, the dark brown one, to match, or try to match, the craft foam I use to indicate a woods or forest.

 

Some 1/32 W. Britain's WWII British infantry for scale.

Speaking of the bases (which are part of the tree trunk and have molded roots - they are integral bases if you want to be fancy). The trees are fairly stable - they do wobble a touch if you bump them, even after removing the mold line on the bottom of the base, but they are in no danger of tipping. That said, I may mount them on some 1.5" diameter discs to eliminate the wobble and to add a few millimeters of extra height, which is never a bad thing when playing with 54s.

The trees are $12usd for twelve (The link is a few paragraphs back. You get two bags of six and each bag comes with that delightfully misleading header card). They clearly aren't the best trees ever, but for the price I think it would be foolish to expect them to be. In any case, I think they'll work just fine on my tables.