Making impregnable jungle terrain?

[Drachenklinge]

The last example is the best option I think you may come up with.

Fairly easy to make, since artificial plants, say from animal-stores and such are easy to get, all in all not much expensive and better looking by the day.
Also, no problem to make the base in whatever suits you, easy and handy.
The plants will de facto look impenetrable, although the do look distingish and separate from each other.
Last but not least the base-edge could be used to define LOS, which is not a quite unimportent aspect for games, even if some plants went over the edges.

It is also possible to stick in on or two big trees in the middle to add some hight to the jungle without making it impossible to reach beneath the pieces.

If you build smaller and bigger parts it will be very cool and diverse jungle. You even may add some markes and objectives of the same making.

[6milPhil]

Was the tree cylinder in one of the wargames magazines a few years back?
I think I saw something like that.
Left the tops loose to use the tubes for storage too?

I recall it being online, but not where, don't remember the latter part, did think they were all one piece but could be wrong.

[Dr DeAth]

I have tried thie technique but can't make it work. In theory i thought it would work but it was just a mess cutting foam and glueing stuff to it.

Buy yourself a cheap coffee grinder and put roughly cut cubes of foam in it along with some paint and pva - it grinds up just fine and after being spread out to dry it works just like the bought stuff.  You'll need to experiment with the amount of paint and PVA you add, I use big plastic syringes to measure mine in (about 5ml of paint per grinder full of foam).  The more PVA you add the more 'clumpy' the result.  You can also re-grind the flock with more PVA if you want finer granules.

If I get time I'll stick up a tutorial as it can save a lot of money making your own.

[Hammers]

Buy yourself a cheap coffee grinder and put roughly cut cubes of foam in it along with some paint and pva - it grinds up just fine and after being spread out to dry it works just like the bought stuff.  You'll need to experiment with the amount of paint and PVA you add, I use big plastic syringes to measure mine in (about 5ml of paint per grinder full of foam).  The more PVA you add the more 'clumpy' the result.  You can also re-grind the flock with more PVA if you want finer granules.

If I get time I'll stick up a tutorial as it can save a lot of money making your own.

 Great. Please do.

[Belgian]

Nono, I got you the first time. Stille did not work for me, softfoam.

Thought you missed the soft foam part in my ramblings, luckily you understood what I meant. 

[Belgian]

Buy yourself a cheap coffee grinder and put roughly cut cubes of foam in it along with some paint and pva - it grinds up just fine and after being spread out to dry it works just like the bought stuff.  You'll need to experiment with the amount of paint and PVA you add, I use big plastic syringes to measure mine in (about 5ml of paint per grinder full of foam).  The more PVA you add the more 'clumpy' the result.  You can also re-grind the flock with more PVA if you want finer granules.

If I get time I'll stick up a tutorial as it can save a lot of money making your own.

I have shredded the foam with a small mixer and even with a bush trimmer by putting smaller foam bits in a bucket. Then covering the bucket with the trimmer in it with a piece of cloth otherwise it will look like it just snowed! Then took the small bits and mixed them with pva and green paint and mixed the lot by hand (wearing gloves) then spread the result in the desired thickness and let to dry (took several days - week if I recall well). Wasn't exactly like the clump foliage by Woodland but certainly much cheaper. In attachment tree made using the home made foliage, not too bad although my previous run of foliage was much nicer of color and look.

[FifteensAway]

Love the Doc's trees - will be adopting his trunk ideas for sure and modifying the canopy idea.

But what I really want to say is that "impenetrable" jungle terrain is pretty rare, mostly at the fringes of jungle - the interior is generally much more open.  Did quite a bit of research on this a while back for non-gaming reasons.

[Rhoderic]

But what I really want to say is that "impenetrable" jungle terrain is pretty rare, mostly at the fringes of jungle - the interior is generally much more open.  Did quite a bit of research on this a while back for non-gaming reasons.

This is true. On ground that's shaded by tree canopies (or the aforementioned ecotones of impenetrable fringe jungle) there's much less of a "burst" of thick vegetation.

That said, for hobby purposes it's only relevant when one intends to model a proper treed jungle - one with actual tall trees (not just palm trees!) and a proper canopy that's either modelled as part of the terrain or implied to exist above a cut-off plane where the trunks terminate for ease of gameplay. And if one wishes to include fringes of impenetrable thickets as part of such a terrain set-up, one will have to think of (and represent!) reasons for why there is an ecotone where trees stop growing in the first place. Typically this would be either water features (rivers and lakes) or man-made cleared areas (roads, villages and the like). I've been doing some layman's research on the nature of real jungles as well, but I still haven't figured out why natural jungle clearings exist in the rare cases when they do - if trees can grow on a patch of ground, they will, so the question is what could make a patch of "dry" ground naturally unable to support trees, in the middle of an otherwise treed jungle. (If anyone knows, I'd love to know )

At any rate, in my experience, this sort of realistic, treed jungle is fairly rare in miniature wargaming. Dr Mathias's rain forest terrain is the sort of landscape that an average wargamer won't even try to model. Most will stick to the usual wargamers' convention of aquarium plants, palm trees and bushes, making a jungle that's mysteriously devoid of tall trees, but bursting with thickets of low-growing vegetation instead. Some might add a smattering of tall trees into the mix, but that doesn't make much sense either. Again, either an area of land is able to support trees, in which case trees will take over and cover that area (at least once an ecological equilibrium - or a supposed "climax community" - has been reached), or it can't support trees which leaves the question of what unusual circumstances brought about such a state of things. A jungle with "a few tall trees here and there" (but not enough to make a continuous canopy) needs some explaining.

So, the conventional treeless wargamer's jungle tends to be something of a flight of fancy. One can, however, think of some reasons for why such an environment would exist: Secondary jungle (ie. jungle that's been once logged and then left to grow wild again, although trees will take over again in time unless there's further human intervention), cloud forests, wetlands, or tropical areas that happen to be particularly badly exposed to the elements, ie. small(ish) islands and some mountain slopes. Then again, these sorts of environments tend to come with further implications of their own in regard to what they "ought to" look like. For instance, a cloud forest would have a lot of epiphytes, whereas the plants of a tropical windswept island would often have a rather "hardy" look about them (meaning more "bunched up", not the sort of luxuriant spread-leafed plants that make up the undergrowth of a rainforest).

Of course, another option is to deliberately define your jungle as being an unrealistic flight of fancy, based on outdated conceptions in the temperate western world of what a tropical jungle is supposed to look like. These old conceptions are largely based on the fact that when Europeans and North Americans used to visit jungle areas in the old days, their usual vantage points from which to view the wilderness were rivers and roads, so most of what they saw were overgrown, impenetrable-looking ecotones, and they simply assumed the "inside" of the jungle must look the same. This naive impression is reflected in a lot of old drawings and paintings of jungle environments, such as the original Phantom comics or the covers of old Tarzan paperbacks. So, if one is deliberately aiming to game a "pulpy" (as opposed to realistic) jungle adventure, then a treeless jungle covered in low-growing, impenetrable thickets may be just the thing!

[FifteensAway]

Rhoderic's eloquent post covers much.  I think the gaming answer is that very little game-able activity took place inside jungles anyway - pygmy ambushes and maybe one battle I can think of along the farther eastern reaches of the Congo in one of the expeditions - I believe led by Stanley.  So, I'd place most 'jungle' games just outside the border of the jungle, areas either from human interference or areas not suitable for jungle - leading perhaps to what the original poster wants, some impenetrable jungle perhaps to line a part of the gaming area. (at a guess, of course re: OPs intent).

[Drachenklinge]

Apart from the existence of impenetrable jungle two houses makes a small village and three with a church a city for tabletop-purposes. ^^
So, a few pieces of "dense forest" with some colourful exotic plants and recognizable equatorian-sort-oft-trees will make a jungle.

As usual it will be a mix of what looks good and what is functional for gaming ie put one's big hands in between the dense jungle pieces, I think.

[Elk101]

I've seen secondary jungle that is more along the lines of a few big trees and emerging growth and I've seen jungle that is primarily massive canopy and relatively dense, but not impenetrable,  vegetation below. I'd venture that one of main reasons to stick to the trails is so you can see what you're standing on, not necessarily because you can't get through the other stuff. Plus trails tend to lead somewhere.

Wargaming terrain, normally by necessity,  is an abstraction of real terrain.  I don't think building something that looks good and is gameable and storable necessarily has to be a scale model of the real thing. Especially when that real thing can change so dramatically from location to location.

[Bushbaby]

Here is how I build cheap and easy to assemble jungle terrain:

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=81791.msg1063030#msg1063030

[Hammers]

This is true. On ground that's shaded by tree canopies (or the aforementioned ecotones of impenetrable fringe jungle) there's much less of a "burst" of thick vegetation.

Very acute, and wordy, Rhoderic! I agree. But not to intellectualize too much this is what I am trying to achieve (for some time):

- a good looking backdrop for an Amazonian jungle
- it is not supposed to be playable, more like a backdrop
- Scaling down plant to look convincing is not feasible
- while "representations of" may be alright there are worse ways and better ways. Twigs, plastic plants, cutoff trunks etc is alright but it is not just so
- jungle is for my purposes impassable terrain with paths and glades cut into it
- it should look like this from above at an angle

... which to me means more of a 3-dimensional map: no twigs, no out of scale plants, no individual leaves, just uneven mounds of foliage, unevenly sized.

I am thinking masses of lumps of foam clad in two-tone (or even more) coloured flock would do the trick but I have had a hell of a time achieving it. Dr D'eath is on to something though. I shall proceed to find an old coffee grinder. The old fold matress I used must perhaps be substituted  for some lighter more absorbent kind if foam.

[Eric the Shed]

Using the old aquarium technique I built impenetrable jungle terrain for my Predator game



http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/the-hunted.html





cheers

[Rhoderic]

Rhoderic's eloquent post covers much.

Thanks!

I think the gaming answer is that very little game-able activity took place inside jungles anyway - pygmy ambushes and maybe one battle I can think of along the farther eastern reaches of the Congo in one of the expeditions - I believe led by Stanley.  So, I'd place most 'jungle' games just outside the border of the jungle, areas either from human interference or areas not suitable for jungle,

That depends largely on the framework of one's own gaming projects, I think. You're probably right as long as we're talking about "realistic" colonial Africa, or WWII in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, or other settings of that sort, but your more pulp-styled adventures, such that games like Pulp Alley, IHMN and 7TV are about, are another matter, to say nothing of fantasy and sci-fi.

Then again, even in a pulpy or fantastical setting, it's probably true that for each one encounter that occurs under triple canopy, there would be several that occur in the fringes and the secondary jungles nearer civilisation. And I still have difficulty thinking of many encounters that would occur in such an out-of-the-way place as a cloud forest. (VSF colonial adventures on Venus, I suppose... )

I've seen secondary jungle that is more along the lines of a few big trees and emerging growth

Yeah, I was kind of covering my arse in regard to that when I mentioned secondary jungle. Human intervention in a jungle biome can take many different forms, so there's probably many different types of secondary jungle.

Only, if one is going for a realistic terrain set-up (and I'm not saying that's necessarily a paradigm in this hobby - it's just one of several different mindsets of equal value), then I'm not sure what the expected telltale signs of a secondary jungle would be. There probably are some, just as there are telltale signs of a cloud forest, a tropical wetland or an exposed-to-the-elements tropical island or mountain slope - I just don't know what they are in the case of secondary jungles.

The one thing I can think of (and I'm aware this is getting very nitpicky) is that in a secondary jungle wherein new trees have been allowed to grow to replace the old ones, those trees will typically have more bunched-up, conical canopies. Only once a new climax community* has been attained do the canopies lose their conical shape and become more spread out. There's also of course the possibility of a few scattered big trees that have been left to stand even as all the others have been cut down. I imagine (without knowing for sure) that such trees would also gradually form more consolidated, bunched-up canopies, as without the protection of other canopies all around them, they're much more exposed to wind and the dessicating effect of the sun.

* Before anyone points it out, I'm aware that the concept of the "climax community" is rather flawed and shallow from the point of view of proper ecologists (which I am not in any way at all), but it still has its uses and relevance in a laymens' discussion like ours.

Wargaming terrain, normally by necessity,  is an abstraction of real terrain.  I don't think building something that looks good and is gameable and storable necessarily has to be a scale model of the real thing.

Oh yes, certainly! When I was referring to the typical wargamers' jungle as a "flight of fancy", it wasn't a negative connotation. I like flights of fancy, in the right time and place. This whole hobby is the primary flight of fancy in my life. That said, it's a good thing to know what the alternatives to the conventional terrain-making approach are. That's part of what makes the "Dr Mathias's Arboreal Extravaganza" thread so intriguing - it's a window to an alternative, very different and very exciting way of representing a jungle on the tabletop. Also, it's a good thing (not strictly a necessity, but a good thing all the same) to have the facts in regard to what real jungles look like in case one might be able to incorporate that knowledge in one's toolbox in a positive way. There are many different frames of mind to modelling wargames terrain, and none are worth less than the others. Let's just not get stuck in a rut, is all I'm saying.

As for my own jungle terrain project, I'm going for what to me feels a happy medium between "practical wargamers' conventionality" and "realism within reason". I've got my share of aquarium plants, but I'm trying to excercise a modicum of judgement in the way I select and use them. I often cut the leaves off and rearrange them in a way that looks more natural to me. I'm even trying to track down some specific types of aquarium plants I've seen in photos from other hobbyists but can't find in Swedish stores (I've done a rather thorough scouring of pet/aquarium stores in several cities!). Some aquarium plants look far more realistic as jungle vegetation than others. Some of the weirder plants I'm defining as "decidedly alien", and keeping separate so I can include or exclude them depending on the setting I'm gaming.

I'm also trying to include a large amount of traditional foam/flock foliage, and other materials like rubberised horsehair and brown lichen, to counterbalance the overly lush, otherwordly look of the aquarium plants. Oh, and there's plastic palm trees and Pegasus Hobbies banana trees in the mix as well, of course.

For now I'm going for more of a fringe/secondary jungle with some trees only at the edges of the board (hence my experiments modelling jungle thickets in "block form"), although at some point I'd like to do a proper "heart of the jungle" set-up like Dr Mathias's one, only with the top canopy left out (and the understory canopy more thinned-out than it would likely be in reality, just so it won't get in the way of gaming so much). It would likely only be for small-scope skirmish/adventure gaming (Pulp Alley and the like) so a 3' by 3' table might suffice.

Very acute, and wordy, Rhoderic!

That a good thing or a bad thing?

But not to intellectualize too much this is what I am trying to achieve (for some time):

- a good looking backdrop for an Amazonian jungle
- it is not supposed to be playable, more like a backdrop
- Scaling down plant to look convincing is not feasible
- while "representations of" may be alright there are worse ways and better ways. Twigs, plastic plants, cutoff trunks etc is alright but it is not just so
- jungle is for my purposes impassable terrain with paths and glades cut into it
- it should look like this from above at an angle
... which to me means more of a 3-dimensional map: no twigs, no out of scale plants, no individual leaves, just uneven mounds of foliage, unevenly sized.

Interesting! Did you change your approach to modelling jungle? I'm just wondering as I recall seeing aquarium plants in your old Arumbaya thread.

As for the "no twigs" thing, I'm just bringing this up by sheer aimless vagary, but I've noticed that jungle canopies do sometimes have dead tree tops sticking out in places. Emergents (ie. trees which grow higher than the main canopy layer) gamble with their lives as they're able to hog more of the sunlight at the cost of greater exposure to wind and dessication. As a consequence they sometimes die and remain standing as whitish-grey twiggy-looking things sticking out of the canopy. Not sure whether that occurs much in floodplain jungles like what I infer you're aiming to model, though.