Mordhiem graveyard

With everything washed and painted we could end here and have perfectly usable terrain, however if you add some more details it can help create interesting little vignettes that can capture peoples attention and set the mood.

Mordhiem is famous for its mood. It is peak grim dark, supported by the amazing art scattered throughout its books. These tiny details can do the same for our terrain.

Adding some candles fits in with the theme nicely. Painting the OSL from the candles so brightly helps reinforce the grim darkness of the rest of the piece.

Adding skulls everywhere helps remind the player that they’re in a graveyard. Adding some spare zombie bits helps it feel extra creepy, reminding the players that in this world the unquiet dead are a real possibility.

And there’s always something creepy about a noose (though this one also helps playability by giving players something they can use to climb up with).

Nothing says grimdark like weathering (apart from skulls). While just leaving things with the dark brown wash would be ok adding some extra weathering we can really kick it up a notch.

Adding rust and verdigris are some ways to add to that grim feeling while adding some more pops of colour. Rust being orange and verdigris being teal give  a unique opportunity to add some colour and keep things grim.

While there are a millions magic products to add these effects I’m cheap so I use regular acrylic paints.

For rust I start with a red-brown. I water this down to basically a wash consistency. Then I dab this onto the metallics in a random pattern. If you put too much on just clean your brush and wick away the excess. I might do two or three goes with the brown, some areas will get multiple coats, some only one. This gives a natural variety that you are after. The watery consistency gives a nice tea staining effect that I think suits rust.

I then grab my fluorescent orange and water it down too. This colour is naturally very translucent so layers over the brown nicely. This I dab onto the centres of the stronger brown splotches. Again you will need multiple layers, but this time I focus on the centres of the previous splotches to create a gradient with the brightest orange in the middle.

Don’t worry if you go over board, you can always go over the orange with more brown or even back to the base coat silver to knock it back.

With verdigris I use the same process but instead of brown and orange I use a blue-green and a bright blue.

The final bit of weathering I like to do is add moss. This is a great way to break up more natural stone pieces and adding a new texture and a pop of colour. To make my moss I use foam flocking torn up into very small pieces (1-2mm across). These I soak in a mix of PVA glue and dirty green wash/ink. You can add a little water to thin the mix and help the foam soak it up. Then you can paint this onto your terrain where you want to. The PVA glue will not only help keep your moss where you want it but will also harden the foam helping protect it. Be careful when applying it as the green colouring will stain what you put it on, even if you move the foam later.

Moss helps make your terrain feel dank and unpleasant. It, along with the oxidation effects, makes your terrain and the world you populate with it, as if it is decaying and rotten.

So now it’s altogether it’s time to play with it.

With these 3 pieces and little scatter I can set up a little graveyard to play mordhiem or other skirmish games in. With another big piece or two I could fit out a spooky graveyard board… now that gets me thinking…

So with a couple of pieces of left overs from the kits used I’ve put together some scatter terrain.

By using all the same techniques it took only an hour or so.