Although we’re solidly into September by now, I’m posting some models that were “finished” in August, and then worked on further in September – so these may or may not qualify for Dave Stone’s annual Season of Scenery challenge. I’ll explain. Across all of my various War Cry sets, I decided to start painting the terrain, beginning with these spiky, lashed-together bridges. Between the two sculpts. it turned out that I’ve got a dozen of the things, and cleaning up the mould lines on them wasn’t fun. Regardless, I managed to do so and got them painted.

The recipe – for my own future reference and anyone else interested – spray black, drybrush vallejo Game Colour Charred Brown, drybrush Vallejo Model Colour 70987 Medium Grey. Paint the ropes a 50-50 mix of VGC Bonewhite & Vallejo Panzer Aces 70.825 German Camo Pale Brown (aka I just grabbed two colours I had to hand and mixed until I was happy, then did it again for each batch). Paint the log ends and sharpened stakes VMC 70.918 Ivory. Wash the whole effing thing in a 1:1:1 mix of Army Painter Dark Tone, AP Strong Tone and Green Stuff World Master Medium (it’s a bit thicker than Lahmian – and much cheaper!). Then spray varnish once dry. Done. Dusted. With more than a week left of September.

BUT. I knew I had some of that Dity Down stuff that all the kids are talking about these days on the way in the post, and I thought that these wooden bridges would be an ideal place to try them out. So I waited. And waited. And finally they arrived, on the 7th of September. That’s yesterday.

So yesterday evening and last night, after catching up on the last half of All Out and then while listening to reports and reactions to the fallout of the Civil War in AEW, I went over the log bridges and some other stuff with the Moss Effect. This is an example of how it turned out. I …quite like it.

Earlier today, I varnished the bridges on their undersides (I’d gone much heavier on the undersides) to see how they’d turn out. Turns out that this particular Water Soluble product behaves pretty similarly to Weathering Powders when being spray varnish – in that it’s not really a fan – leaving only the heaviest and deepest parts with any colour. Well, that’s why I tested it on these (and the other stuff you’ll see here).

When painting the Archon Wooden Stairs the other day, I also knocked out the much shorter War Cry Catacombs wooden bridges. I also held off on posting these (despite the Season of Scenery) because I wanted to see how they’d turn out with Moss Effects alongside weathering pigments (added post-varnish). The underside of these got sprayed with varnish alongside the log bridges, and you can see how the sides are all pretty black – the green on them has pretty much melted away with the varnishing.

After covering the bridges in Moss effects, I also decided to bring those Archon Wooden Stairs back inside and give them the Moss treatment. Again it dulled the effects right down once varnished. I still added Liquid Weatheirng pigment afterwards and I think it improves these stairs immensely for not too much extra work – even with the toned-down moss as seen here.

Finally, I also did the same with the Archon Stone Stairs. The moss looked great initially, and after varnishing it merely looked good. Again, adding weathering pigments as a final touch lifted them back up a little more. These are all pretty low-tier bits of terrain, so I feel no need to go back and try to make them perfect or anything. They’re all certainly good enough for the table! I’ll certainly keep playing with this stuff and noting things in my posts as I learn new things about it for the next little while.

I am considering whether to try out the Moss effect on the Beastgrave Lair pieces… any thoughts?

This concludes my Season of Scenery, though there are also naturally a bunch of unfinished projects that will tricle out over the coming months. I’m thinking that perhaps instead of a three month Season of Scenery we perhaps have two of them per year. The existing July-Aug and then maybe Dec-Jan? (when us Southern Hemisphericals have nice spraying weather, good light, long days and time off work!) It’d also give people a break and time to get revved up again. Whddaya think, Dave and others? 😀