Jungle terrain is a favorite of mine. It probably has something to do with Tarzan, W.W.II movies set in the Pacific and the countless science fiction stories set in jungles. Like most of my terrain, the jungle pieces are done on blueboard bases; most of them are either tree bases or underbrush.

The trees are made from 17 gauge wire. I take four or five pieces of wire and twist them around each other, leaving the last two or three inches of each end alone. These will form the roots and the branches. Next I wrap masking tape around the wire; this was originally done to thicken the trunk and may not be necessary with my current method. I used to use putty to create the texture for the trunks, but now wrap cord (from an old venetian blind) around it instead. The cord has been soaked in watered-down Elmer’s glue to make it stay on. After the glue dries, I usually go ahead and paint the tree with craft acrylics.

Once the tree has dried, I start cutting leaves. This is the most annoying part of the job. My last batch of leaves were made from the kind of paper you get from art-supply stores for use with brushes and inks. These were cut out and fixed to the branches with masking tape from the underside. I’ve recently seen another method, where masking tape is simply folded over the branch and cut into leaf shapes; that may work better than the way I do it now. Painting the leaves is fairly simple.

The underbrush pieces are simply blueboard, sometimes with rock formations (more blueboard) added to them. The plants are made in several ways and each base will usually have several kinds. Grass is simply unraveled cord glued into a hole; small bushes are made from green scrubbing pads. Alien plants can be made with beads, dried peas and whatever else you think might look interesting. The base is flocked to finish it off (the scrubbing pad bushes are usually added after the flocking so I don’t have to work around them). The bases have enough plant life scattered around them to give an impression of undergrowth, but always remember that figures will need some place to stand! We generally treat any model on the base as having soft/light cover.

I keep a number of the scrubbing pad bushes loose; these are scattered around the table to provide cover in any spots that might otherwise go bare. They also improve the look of the table.