Water plumes for Cruel Seas

 Cruel Seas has a mechanic that requires tracking how many times a ship has been shot with sufficiently large weapon.
Cool way to keep track, and not fill the table with immersion breaking counters, is to use water plumes.
Materials needed are:
-Coarse turf (or something similar loose landscaping material).
-Greenstuff
-Metal wire
-PVA & Superglue

 Start off by making coarse armature of the plume with Greenstuff and superglue a metal wire into it.
While GS is still sticky, press some turf to the armature for easier coverage for future layer(s).

 Simple plumes have only one wire in them.

 If you do explosions or multi-pronged plumes, just stick more wires in.
Try to keep plumes as fluffy as possible, they'll be smoothed in the next step.

 Then, mix PVA with water, I use Hob-e-Tact, but regular is just fine.

 With the mixture, wet everything carefully. Do not rub or overdo this as it will get turf loose.

Either wait for them to dry or not :)

 Once plumes are dried, it is time for fine tuning and hardening.
Make similar PVA slush as before, and mix it with your turf.

Then drip small amount of superglue to the dried plume and let it spread until you have covered the whole plume.
This will harden the surface and make it durable + easier to paint.
If you have holes, or you want to lengthen the prongs, just dabble the turf+PVA mixture from previous step on top of the still wet superglue where needed.

 As this is a proof of concept, I thought to try"basing" the plumes for sturdier standing.
i user superglue and pieces of plastic cut to form.

I used this this to fill the holes between the base and plume.
I guess pva + fine sand would be better.

 After everything is dried, basecoat white, and paint. I used my trusty receipt for white: Blue Grey Pale -> Pale Greyblue -> white.
Here they are in the first step.

 Ad voila',  plumes. I cut 2 plumes I did in this example shorter after painting, as they towered small boats a bit too much. It looked like someone was shooting a bit too big cannons at them.

Lastly, experiment with sizes and forms, and do not forget to make explosion sounds with your mouth during the whole process! :)