With my first land terrain piece done for Blood & Plunder, I moved on to scatter terrain and smaller items. I knew I wanted the standard Caribbean palm trees but there is then the question of storage. I decided I needed to print my own tree bases and would use cheap plastic trees to plug-n-play.
This file took about 5 minutes to make in Fusion360 and then a quick slice through Cura and print on my FDM printer. The slicer allows me to alter the dimensions so I created 2 more options with slightly altered shapes and printed them out as well.
Next, I drilled holes through the pieces where the palm trees could set into (given that they have stems to pin into some terrain material). This pack of about twenty palms was enough to give me some good coverage across my three bases.
I want to leave the area open enough that figures can fit through and be considered “in the terrain” for game mechanic purposes.
Why the model took so little time for me in the CAD program was because I didn’t bother trying to make it realistic. I always knew I’d use green stuff to smooth out the unnatural geometries I initially created. The main goal here is to create a more natural incline to the raised sections.
With the green stuff cured, I needed one last element to help hide or blend in the contours. White glue and sand/ballast completes the terrain. When it dries, I then hit again with a couple of coats of watered down white glue misted on top. The result is a hard and tough terrain piece that should survive a good bit of handling.
Priming it brown and airbrushing in a sloppy gradient completes the whole piece and makes it ready for the table.