Basing Basics
Monday, November 17th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed
Any time I’m working on miniatures I try to find something to do with the base. It just adds so much to the final product if you’ve got something more then a plain 1-color base for the mini to stand on.
It doesn’t have to be anything complex though. Before I even had any flocking material I just cut a few grooves in the base, put some red ink in them, then dry brushed grey over the textured top. Made a neat chaos-world cracked landscape on the cheap.
If you have some spare model bits, those are excellent for use on bases. I had a couple Imperial Guard parts left so I chopped them up a bit and put them on the base of my daemon prince. Instant recent victim.
You can get more industrious and do something like the greenstuff bases I use on my eldar. I wanted a smooth worn stone look, so I made some “stamp” impressions of cracks in the stone on a warwalker / dreadnought base and used those to make various patterns in a thin layer of greenstuff on the eldar bases. A quick brush-over to smooth it and it works nicely.
Flocking is a good stand-by, too. And you can do a lot with very little effort. For my Menoth army I wanted a scrabbly dessert plains feel so I just coat the base with white glue, dip in mixed-size sand, then dip again in some scorched static grass. The grass just gets a few sprigs between the rocks, giving it a nice scraggly weed feel. And all in about 30 seconds.
I also know some people who buy the pre-cast special bases. This can be a nice alternative for fancy bases that all look similar to keep an army tied together. Though it sometimes involves a different type of work as you’ll usually need to pin your mini to them since they don’t often have slots or holes ready-made.
Plasticard or quark board chunks are good stone-slab materials for bases and get used frequently. It’s cheaper then buying pre-made bases typically. It’s relatively easy, but still involves a little pinning work along with plenty of hobby-blade-fu. But you can get exactly what you’re after without too much fuss.
Whatever route you chose for your minis, I highly recommend doing something. I’ve found that it always makes the games more fun for all involved when you go that one extra little step to spruce it up a notch.
bases modeling
