Skeleton hand trees for Fanticide

Skeletal hand trees

In my last post I laid out how I was building forest bases with removable trees. In the midst of that, I also put together some special bits to add to the forest bases and use as hostile terrain for Fanticide.

A couple weeks ago, I picked up some small plastic skeletal hands from the craft store. They had them in the clearance section with all the Halloween stuff. In scale with a 25mm figure, these things would be about 10-15 feet tall. I decided they would make some really creepy special terrain and grabbed them.

The plan was to trim the base of each hand, mount it on a 40mm base and use it with the forest stands I'm making. Looking at the hands, though, I realized pretty quickly that they would not stand well without some kind of support.

I decided to use a heavy-duty staple pushed through from the underside of the base to support them and hold them on the base. To start, I grabbed a line of staples out of my toolbox and pulled a bunch off the line. Then I used a staple to mark the places to drill on the underside of the base.

Marking the base with a staple

I used my pin vice to drill out the holes. The bit I used made holes that were really tight on the staple. That way the tension between the base and the staple will help hold everything together, rather than just relying on glue.

Holes drilled

Next I put a drop of super glue between the holes and pressed the staple into place.

A drop of glue to hold the staple

I did this for all of the bases I needed and set them aside to dry while I worked on the hands.

The base ready for the hand

The hands all had a rounded base, so I used a razor saw, a razor knife, and a pair of wire cutters to trim them flat. To make sure the hand would fit on the ends of the staple, I laid it on a base and marked where the tines were with a marker. Then I used my Dremel tool to drill out the pilot holes for the pins.

I used the Dremel because the plastic the hands are made from is very dense and it was really difficult to use the pin vice. If you are using a rotary tool to do something like this, use a vice to hold the piece you're drilling. It's too easy to slip and drill into your hand otherwise.

Marking the base of the hand

Once the drilling was done, I tested the hand with the base. To secure the hand in place, I added a drop of glue between the pins and pushed the hand into place. I made sure that the staples didn't pull off the bottom of the bases by pressing a pair of plyers against the edge of the staple on the underside while pushing the hand into place on the top.

A hand glued in place on its base

Finally, I textured the bases with some gravel and sand and set them aside to dry.

I plan to use these in games of Fanticide to occasionally make forests a little dangerous. When I use them, I'll use the following rules.

Whenever a model ends its move on a forest base, it has a chance to wake the giants in the earth. Roll a die. On a 1 or 2, the model is attacked by a giant. Replace the nearest tree stand with a giant's hand. The giant hands have a Give of 6. The hand remains in play and will thereafter attack any model that moves within 3" of it.