We wanted this Whirlwind to look like it had been abandoned for a really, really long time. To get the feel of elapsed time and that the vehicle had been forgotten (beyond that evoked by the listing and rusting), we figured a large tree growing through the vehicle would fit the bill nicely. A quick Google search for mangrove trees gave us all the ammunition we needed to build one of our own.

It turns out that our very own Warhammer Beastmen section of the web site has a good article for scratch building your own trees. We used steps from both Mark's how-to as well as Chad's mutated Nurgle tree. Rather than duplicate those articles here, we encourage you to view the originals instead. They'll aid you in the construction process.

Pictured right and from multiple angles below, you'll see the armature for the mangrove-like tree. By following Mark's steps and keeping the ruined tank on hand for size reference, we built the basic shape with thick wire. Then, we wrapped thin floral wire (the green wire) around this thin armature to bulk out the tree. Once we were satisfied with the armature, we bulked out the tree with Aves Apoxie sculpt two-part putty. See how we did it here.

Note: You may want to wear some sort of thin gloves when working with the wire to avoid scratches and puncture wounds. Latex gloves will work for everything by the sharpest wire ends.