How Tall Are Your Trees?

Extra Crispy · Post by **Extra Crispy** » Mon May 15, 2017 4:28 am

I like tall trees on my table top whenever possible. Trees commonly range in heights up to 300' but our game trees rarely exceed a few inches. Even in 1/285 they should reach up to 12" tall!

So just for grins and giggles, here is a quick chart showing how tall trees should be, if we are matching trees to figures:

BurtWolf · Post by **BurtWolf** » Mon May 15, 2017 10:33 am

That's a cool chart... I just eyeball it when making trees with GHQs bump chenille - roughly three to four times the height of a Panther tank.

I would love to hear how people make dead trees - that is a trunk with a few scraggly ranches and no foliage. My attempts look awful.

av8rmongo · Post by **av8rmongo** » Mon May 15, 2017 6:52 pm

Yes, but... this is the long standing problem with this scale - especially with moderns. If one tries to use terrain in scale with the model it is far too large for the ground scale of most rule sets. If one tries to use 1/285 scale for ground scale then it requires a much larger playing area or smaller forces and shorter engagement distances. Or, I suppose, it would require a love for all things FoW. In the end I think TLAR (That Looks About Right) is the best approach.

Extra Crispy · Post by **Extra Crispy** » Mon May 15, 2017 7:44 pm

Agreed. There's also the practical "I need to see/reach over or around it" issue. If it get sknocked over every 15 seconds it's too tall no matter the scale.

I'm laying out a 6mm SciFi game now and am once again struggling with scale. Vertical ground scale, horizontal scale, terrain scale, figure scale and time scale.

AAAAAAaaaaaahhhhhrrrrggghhhhhhh!!!

Just wondering what other lads do.

Extra Crispy · Post by **Extra Crispy** » Mon May 15, 2017 7:51 pm

Here is the table I am starting to lay out. Notice the very tall red apple trees lining roads as well as the shorter conifers in the far distance.

Another view showing tall blue/metallic alien trees in the top left.

Gompel · Post by **Gompel** » Tue May 16, 2017 4:15 pm

I am always interested in trees and landscape in general, but where did you get that list from? It seems off to me.
I count in centimeters and meters, but if I convert your inches, those tree sizes seem to be what a tree can max. become under maybe perfect conditions. I mean, where I live (NL), trees are not often taller than 20m (roughly 60feet that is). Most adult trees are about 15m I think. 15meter = 1500cm -> 1:285 scale makes 5,3cm. That is just over 2 inch.
So maybe trees are taller in your area, but I wouldn't go as far as saying 'trees commonly range in heights up to 300 feet'. I think I can savely say that trees in Europe are commonly not taller than 30m (roughly 100feet).

What battlefields are you scaling?

BattlerBritain · Post by **BattlerBritain** » Tue May 16, 2017 5:12 pm

Yeah I had a look at the heights of those tress in that table and thought that they were referring to the trees found in BC or Washington State?

In Europe the trees in and around urban environments tend to be a bit shorter.

I tend to use 2" tall trees as well. They seem about right.

kiasutha · Post by **kiasutha** » Wed May 17, 2017 1:17 am

Gompel wrote:I am always interested in trees and landscape in general, but where did you get that list from? It seems off to me.
I count in centimeters and meters, but if I convert your inches, those tree sizes seem to be what a tree can max. become under maybe perfect conditions. I mean, where I live (NL), trees are not often taller than 20m (roughly 30feet that is). Most adult trees are about 15m I think. 15meter = 1500cm -> 1:285 scale makes 5,3cm. That is just over 2 inch.
So maybe trees are taller in your area, but I wouldn't go as far as saying 'trees commonly range in heights up to 300 feet'. I think I can savely say that trees in Europe are commonly not taller than 30m (roughly 100feet that is).

What battlefields are you scaling?

Perhaps the "new math" has reached NL?

I think 20 meters is about 65 feet, not 30!
Being a long time model railroader, the size of trees and such is something I pay a lot of attention to.
Without looking at too many numbers, I would say Marks' list is pretty accurate for mature "old growth" trees. Such trees were once common in parts of the US.
But in Europe, I think you cut down your old-growth forests a long time ago; too much ship building maybe?

Perhaps on parts of the russian front you might find them?
I know that my own home state of Pennsylvania exported huge amounts of big timber to Europe in the 19th.century for exactly that reason.
From an American perspective, while most of our big trees may have been cut by WW2 era, some did remain-mostly on the west coast, but not all.
In Pennsylvania, we were lucky enough to protect some of the last groves, and there are still white pine and hemlock in them that reach from 45 to over 60 meters in height.
So, a maximum of 280 or more feet...
OTOH, from a gaming standpoint I've never used many trees over about 4-5 inches; even in larger (15/20mm)scales- and only that big if on movable bases or singly.
Like others, I've mostly used around 2"/50mm in "Micro" It's practical, and to me it looks right.

Gompel · Post by **Gompel** » Wed May 17, 2017 1:56 am

Hehe, thanks for correcting me

I would love to see some of those big trees over here, but besides being cut down, our common species simply don't grow that tall. Common native species here are Oak, birch, beech and pine tree and unless very old, 25m is about max. I think poplar are most often the tallest trees here, since they grow fast and usually have a bit more space when planted. 30-40m is not uncommon for them.