15/18mm American Civil War: Update 5, River and Bridges.

So update 5, more terrain. At the end of the last update I showed the terrain from, amongst others, TimeCast that I had bought, now it was time to get it painted.

Terrain items bought at Hammerhead.

The three bridges, two wooden, one stone, are resin whilst the river sections are latex rubber. The resin items had their bases sanded to level them and then they and the river pieces where washed and left to dry.

The bridges were under-coated grey, areas block painted, washes applied and then dry-brushed. Muddy track parts of the castings were painted to match the felt tracks I had got from Hotz Mats, seen below with Hotz Mats fields and some troops for scale.

Hotz Mats felt tracks and fields.

Bank areas were flocked and finally the water areas were painted, more on the colour later. They were then matt varnished and after drying the water areas were given a coat of Humbrol Clear Gloss varnish.

Finished bridges

Bridges with troop stand for scale.

So now the rivers and what colour to paint them. I knew I didn't want bright blue as these would be used mostly for ACW games with lots of wooded areas nearby in most cases. I tried a sandy colour with a blue wash, didn't look right. A sandy base with a green wash, again wrong. Dark centre with lighter sides? nope. Grey green? no. Finally settled on a single colour, that being Vallejo 887 Brown Violet, the same colour I use for my WWI british aircraft. The only variation was the centre of the ford sections which I painted a sandy colour before washing with a thinned brown violet and adding a few small rocks.

I didn't prime the river sections as the TimeCast website said this was not required. The banks were base-coated the same colour as that used to do the mud track and bank parts of the bridges before getting an Agrax Earthshade wash then dry brush with the base-coat. I then painted in the river itself before applying a couple of coats of brush on acrylic gloss varnish then a coat of Humbrol Clear Gloss (applying the gloss varnish at this point was stupid in hindsight). I then flocked the banks before realising that to seal these with spray matt varnish I was going to have to mask all the gloss water sections or spray the entirety matt and redo the gloss, see previous comment about hindsight!

In the end I sprayed the whole thing and when dried reapplied a coat of Humbrol Clear Gloss to the water areas, plus a little on the crossings of the fords to give a wet effect.

Finished river and ford sections, light gives a helpful reflection.

I'm not entirely happy with how the river came out. My error with the varnishing order has meant there are possibly too many layers of paint/varnish on what are very flexible pieces and some very fine crack lines can been seen in the river surfaces. I may have to strip these back at some point in the future an redo applying the lessons learned. If they had been non flexible river sections or a larger scale I probably would have approached them completely differently and used some form of water effects. Hopefully if I store them correctly they will survive for a while.

One last thing I knocked up quickly were some markers to denote Heavy Casualties for Fire & Fury. As I haven't got any suitable miniatures I decided to use a simple flag on a base indicate this. A bit of research led to discover that both sides utilised a plain yellow flag to identify field hospitals (a green edge was added late in the war by the Union) so this is what I went for.

Heavy casualty markers.

Next, finish those seven bases of infantry before tackling the earthworks and fences.

Tony.