When work on a new army begins, the Studio scenery builder, Mark Jones, works alongside the Game Developers and Miniatures Designers to create some terrain pieces for the Warhammer Armies book. These will be an essential part of creating the right atmosphere for the book. In the case of the Beasts of Chaos, building a herdstone was inevitable, but by creating more of the features of the forests in which the Beastmen live, we could expand on their background. Early experiments with fortifications shaped like a Chaos star didn’t fit the feral aspects of the Beastmen very well. The construction looked too complicated and involved for them. Something more in keeping with their nature had to be found.

The answer came from a sketch by Nuala Kennedy in early stages of work on the army. The sketch shows a corrupted tree, chained to pillars of rock, writhing with life and surrounded by the skeletons of its victims. This tied in with some of the background ideas for the Beastmen being discussed at the time. Beastmen were said to have destroyed Elven waystones, designed to contain the corruption coming from large pieces of buried warpstone. With the waystones gone, they would build their herdstones or plant trees over the warpstone. This fitted the sinister, fairy tale quality of the Beastmen perfectly. Taking this as his inspiration, Mark set about constructing such a tree for the Studio army.

After looking at a variety of different methods to build the tree, Mark settled on making it from twisted wire. Wire is a good material to use in producing highly detailed models, and also has the ability to be bent and twisted into a suitable shape. The basic idea behind a wire tree is to twist a number of wire strands together, allowing one end to open into roots while the other end is gradually divided and twisted to form branches. The whole construction can then be glued to a base and bent into suitably sinister forms. To achieve this, Mark decided to build not one but three trees and wire them together to form his monster tree. He built it in this way to make the early stages of construction more manageable, as most of the wire would be bent by hand.

Next: Creating the Tree.
Previous: The First Tree Finished.