I'm a member of the LOTR group, and I'm currently failing spectacularly, but it was even worse when I had trees.
Three games ago, I tried to gfi with a tree because desperate times had led to desperate measures. Apo fail to follow, and dead tree presents itself. Now don't mistake me, this isn't a whine, although I was kind of annoyed at the time, this was the turning point in my flings career. After my other tree got badly hurt, my flings were out of the shade, and into the limelight!
Next game, the other tree got killed too! Now without all those pesky branches to get in the limelight my flings are in full flow, and almost beat a group of shorties (dwarves), despite the fact that they were so scared of us they had hired a runesmith!!! They had to resort to a last turn scramble to even draw with us.

Who needs trees...