I mentioned in my previous article on the subject that bases wasn’t something that I came back into the hobby eager to do. As I said, we didn’t even bother with flocking, just did the Goblin Green. And those people who did do bases were literally the drop it in the sand bucket kind. I don’t remember tufts being a thing. It just wasn’t a part of our hobby group.
But, wow… today I could talk about basing all day long. Take these:
This was a variation on the scheme I’d come up with for vehicles and it’s simplicity itself. I cut out a bunch of thin cork and then tear up the edges and glue it down. Then I pick at it with a hobby knife to create potholes. Then I put a layer of texture paint around it. Then I prime it and paint it, giving the textured area a good wash while the “road” segment is dry-brushed lighter and lighter shades of gray. Then I give the “wastes” a lighter dry brush, paint on some road stripes, do the sides, and done!
If I have my cork glued down the day before, I can probably crank out twenty in a day.
Then there are my underhive bases:
It’s not that I don’t like the Necromunda bases it’s just that they leave me uninspired. There’s too much detail on them. So leaving them half-assed feels bad but I can’t work up the desire to actually paint them to the standard I’d want to.
Fortunately, my wife put up fly screens all around the house and I was left with a lot of scrap. As in, I’ve made hundreds of bases with what was left over, some textured plastic card, a bit of wire, and the chopped bits of zip ties. Spray it all black, dry brush it with a dark silver, do hazard stripes along the edge, maybe give the wire some color, paint the rims gray, and done!
These take a little longer because of how the fly screen needs to be glued down. But not a whole lot longer. I usually make these in batches of ten or fifteen just to have a bunch. Or I’ll do them in the same numbers as my next new gang. But I have a little bag I always have five to ten spares in different sizes, just in case.
I like them because they’re stylish enough that they look good under the minis and compliment the model but they’re simple enough that they can also fade into the background. And that’s about the full list of job requirements for a base.
If there’s one video I’ll always watch on YouTube though, it’s always a basing video. After finishing a miniature, basing is probably my next most favorite part of the hobby.
