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I picked up a box of the Citadel trees and had originally intended them to be a 'dead forest' because the leaves were just too fragile. Then, I decided to pick up some tiny rare earth magnets and give the leaves have a 'breakaway' capability. Well... the magnets are (heavily) super glued on and the trees just need a little green stuff around the magnets and painted.

The base has already been painted: (The tree stumps are scorched brown w/ badab black wash... and then brown drybrush... photography was dark)


Here is the pile o' leaves w/ magnets:


A closeup of one of the trees and its magnets:


The three trees w/ their magnets and no leaves:




Here is one of the trees w/ leaves:

Good solution - but that's the exact reason I like using trees made with pipecleaner trunks and the squishy foam railroad modeling tree flock - when you need to mush it around to get models between them, they don't tend to break away.

I have primed the leaves and trees... and painted the first tree to test colors and such.

The other two will be completed soon... then it is off to paint the leaves.

Great job on those trees!

Good idea; I'll be looking into it!

Been a little busy over the holidays... but the three trees are finished in being painted. Now I have to complete the leaves, but that shouldn't take too terribly long. I hope to have this done in the next couple days.

Looks nice!

Wow, very nice. I was sure you'd used washes until I read the beginning.

I have finished up the leaves... and now everything simply needs to be sprayed with a flat matte finish. Everything was drybrushed with a Dark Angels Green basecoat... then a Snot Green first layer drybrush... the second and final drybush is either a Goblin Green or a Scorpion Green. I swapped them up to give a little variance in the project. The wood is base coated with a Scorched Brown... then bestial, vermin and vomit brown...

Here are what the leaves will look like from the outside... a little more care on the drybrushing...


Here is the underside of the leaves... with the magnets painted brown and a heavy 'ard Coat...

Here are the magnets and washers that hold the tree to the base...

What an excellent idea, thanks for the tip/pics.

Well... my little side project is now complete... I have fully magnetized the leaves and trees to create a more durable and transportable Citadel Trees set. I think the next set will have even more magnets to attach more leaves... but this was a good concept try. I probably had about 12 hours total on this project... trying to figure out how I wanted to do it... and trying to make it look as nice as possible. Just seemed like something that would be a nice diversion between painting Orcs and Cadians. And it was!





If anybody else wants to try this... I can provide more info... but it was a fairly simple conversion.

Thats a really good idea. What size magnets did you use? If I ever pick up the trees, I'll use your idea.

gritz2m...

I use the 3.2mm magnets for the trees...

http://www.rare-earth-magnets.com/detail-ID-121.html

Nicely excecuted, the trees look great. I never spend much time on terrain myself but this may be a project I want to look into in the future.

Me likely. Can I convince you to write this up as an article?

Sure... I can write this up malfred... I'll try to get it posted this afternoon.

I don't usually like to spent a lot of time either... but I saw so many nicely painted Citadel Trees busted up from transportation and playing and was guilty myself of snapping off some leaves once when they grabbed my shirt while playing that I wanted to try and 'fix' them with magnets.

Wow...did you just feel that Taz???? That was me...stealing your idea. Thanks for the pics and nice job!!

Really nice job. Gotta order me a buncha magnets.

Thanks guys... feel free to steal... pillage... or whatever...and as requested... it is now a more detailed article!