Earth and water...

The experimentation continues!  Among other things, I need to begin making desert terrain tiles for our Mediterranean campaigns in Memoir '44.

I also wanted to see what kinds of things I could do with the new jar of water effects.

These tiles will be turned into two separate items.  One a river, the other a wadi.  The wadi's. or dry riverbeds, are the most important, and unique, feature of the Mediterranean scenarios.  Your troops MUST follow the direction of the riverbed, as each side constitutes a ravine.

I am using the Earth Vallejo effects to make the sand and silt piled up against the edges of the riverbed.  I need to keep enough space for 4 of the infantry miniatures to pass.

I felt like I had to add some boulders and rocks in there.  In my future tiles, I will stick to smaller, finer gravel.

As I did that, I wanted to prep this base for using the water effects.  My goal was to see what would happen if I put paint into the water effects medium.  What would happen with more opaque paint, for instance.

Would I need to use a more transparent paint instead, like one of the Secret Weapon washes, for instance?

As all that was drying, I made one more city terrain tile.  In our last campaign, we really needed more of them.  I will also need to make more hedgerows!

Just as I did with the other city tiles, I used a few scrap pieces of pink foam, making sure that there would be enough room for the 4 figures, and a place for sandbag emplacements!  It's very important to remember that!

I wanted to see how much structure the water effects had, so I brushed this out quickly.  Also, it was necessary to see how this would dry... and how long it would take.

In the future, would I be better off with several thin layers, building it up, or could I jump the gun and do it all in one step.

The base is set.  I tried to get some color in the water, so that the water effects could allow that to show through.

This is where I started to experiment with mixing in paints.  I was very surprised to see how little of the opaque paint was required to overtake and overpower the water effects!

Here it is added to the base.  In the future, I think I will stick to tinting the medium with super translucent colors like glazes, and only use the more opaque colors to create seafoam and water splash.

I wanted to get a handle on how all this worked in advance of my one special project that I want to create for Adepticon next year.  That is, a waterline display of the French battleship Richelieu.